by Zoe Sharp
Still, three of us made the grade, and I knew without undue bravado that I had the edge over the others.
And that’s when I met Sean Meyer for the first time.
He was there to greet us when we clambered, stiff-legged and weary, out of the back of the four-tonners, boots landing hard on frosted tarmac outside the barracks that would be our new home.
He stood and watched us, quiet, still. I’d already clocked the stripes on his sleeve and made him for an NCO – someone to be wary of. He wasn’t as big as I’d expected, either in height or bulk, but there was something unnervingly solid about him. Hit him with an iron bar, and the bar was likely to be what bent.
“Listen up,” he said when we were all out. He didn’t have to shout and he didn’t have to say it twice. “My name is Sergeant Meyer and it’s my dubious honour to be in charge of you little lot during your initial training.” He paused, let his gaze travel over us without expression. “Don’t worry – you’ll remember the name, because before this course is up, you’re all going to hate my guts.”
There were a few nervous laughs, but he’d spoken entirely matter-of-fact, without relish or menace. A straightforward statement, and all the more chilling because of it.
“If you don’t hate me, that means I’m not pushing you hard enough – and you’re not pushing yourselves hard enough either. Nobody slacks on my time,” he went on. “So, if you’re not prepared to put in total effort, total commitment, you might as well leave now – save us all a lot of pain.”
He paused again, as if expecting a few dropouts right there. His eyes never stopped ranging over us. I’m sure it was my imagination, but they seemed to linger longest on the three girls. I lifted my chin and met his gaze, unable to contain a hint of defiance.
He stared me out for a moment longer, nothing in his face, then nodded towards the gate we’d just entered by. It had already closed behind us, was guarded by sentries with guns and dogs. “You’ll notice the fences round this camp are designed to keep undesirables on the outside,” he said. “Any time you want to leave, go – you’ll find it’s a hell of a lot easier to get out than it was to get in.”
Again there were a few nervous smiles, even the odd chuckle. Meyer heard them and his expression darkened. “One last thing,” he said. “You can forget everything you’ve achieved so far, because now you’re going to have to prove how good you are all over again.” A pause, the timing deadly. “The bad news is you’re going to have to prove it to me.”
And with that he gave a curt dismissive nod, turned and walked away.
I remember watching him go, the effortless way he moved, and I recognised the danger he presented – on all kinds of levels.
“Whew, he’s a bit of all right, isn’t he?” said one of the other girls – I think her name was Woolley. She sniffed. “Mind you, he don’t half know it.”
But that wasn’t how I saw him. In fact, I’d never encountered anyone so self-aware. He had the air of a man who could close his eyes at any time and describe everything around him down to the last detail. There was a calm confidence, a coiled lethality. You just knew, without quite knowing how, that he could kill you without a flicker, but there was no swagger to him, only that deep stillness I’d first noticed, like a glacier. Implacable, immovable, and colder than the sea.
And I swore I’d break through that cool, by being better than the rest – someone he’d remember. Shame things didn’t quite turn out the way I’d planned.
***
After I left the New Adelphi Club I just had time to call in at the supermarket before I was due at Shelseley Lodge. I was getting low on the essentials like toothpaste and washing up liquid and I couldn't put it off any longer. I went via the nearest petrol station. The Suzuki's a thirsty little sod unless you take it really easy, and I was running on fumes.
I suppose I'd enjoy shopping more if I had a car, or a big touring bike with hefty panniers. As it is I have to watch the size and shape of what I buy as much as the content. If it's a choice between dried packet peas or the tinned variety, I go for the packet just because it's easier to carry.
I usually go round with two baskets, because I know that's roughly what will fit in my tank bag and rucksack. When they're full, I have to stop, although there are occasions when I've ridden home with a box of cornflakes stuffed down the front of my jacket. Or had to eat some surplus item standing in the car park, purely because there was no way of carrying it. Such are the routine problems of everyday biking life.
I started riding a motorbike while I was in the army, mainly I suppose just to annoy my parents. Not that joining up hadn't done so enough already. Still, when you've been nothing but a big disappointment to them from the word go, you may as well go the whole hog.
My parents are typical upper middle class. Nice big detached Georgian house in the country, Volvo estate and Jaguar saloon on the gravel driveway. My mother even has the obligatory brace of Labradors and owns a pair of those green Wellington boots with the buckles on the side.
My father is a doctor – a surgeon. I failed to live up to his expectations from a very early age. I should have been the first-born of twins, a girl and a boy, but by some freak of fortune I came into the world alive and my twin reached it dead.
I think things began to go downhill as soon as the midwife turned to him and said, “Well congratulations, sir, at least you have a daughter.” He went off to cancel my brother's place at Gordonstoun and his interest in me was never really revived.
The cool and logical mind that makes him so good at his profession is carried over to his personal life. He and my mother must have had sex at least once – I'm an only child – but conjuring up the image of it defies my imaginative powers.
He never even flickered when I told him I was joining up. He asked in a detached manner where I was expected to do my training, and to please let my mother know in advance when I was coming home on leave, so she could get my room ready. Then he went back to his newspaper as if the subject was of no further interest to him.
My mother was horrified, but more, I suspect, for the social implications than anything else. A son in the army is one thing, although unless it's one of the more up-market regiments it doesn't hold quite the same kudos that it used to. A daughter in the WRAC is quite another thing. She even took me off to one side and asked me if I was gay.
I think it was about my third or fourth leave that I turned up on the first motorbike I bought after passing my test, a second-hand Yamaha 350cc Powervalve.
It provoked the strongest reaction from my father yet. He took me off into his study, sat me down, and handed me pages of case notes. They were all of people he'd dealt with who'd received injuries in motorcycle accidents. It was gory stuff, made all the more gory for being written in such a detached, clinical manner.
Case after case, they made me shiver. Eventually I looked up and demanded to know if my father thought this would put me off motorcycling. “I know the risks and I'm careful,” I said defiantly.
“I'm sure you are, Charlotte,” he replied. “I have no intention of trying to influence your decisions one way or the other. The only thing I ask is that you ride with the correct protective clothing.” Just when I thought he was showing signs of affection, he added, “It makes reconstructive work so much easier.”
In the end, though, it wasn't my fondness for motorbikes that curtailed my army career. I wonder if my parents would have found it easier to forgive me if it had been.
Or for me to forgive them.
***
By the time I came out of the supermarket, the light had gone and it was threatening to rain. The wind was a lazy one – it went straight through you because it couldn't be bothered to make a detour.
I rode quickly through the dwindling daylight to the Lodge and slotted the bike into a space at the edge of the gravel, near the overgrown tangle of rhododendron bushes. Lights were blazing from every window as I walked through the front door.
I called out as
usual as I hit the hallway, but no one answered. I poked my head round the door into Tris and Ailsa's sitting room, but that was empty too.
Moving more cautiously now, I walked through the ground floor of the house, under ornate plaster mouldings muffled by years of magnolia emulsion. Where were they all?
The only logical place to look for the entire household was the ballroom, and that's where I headed now. It sounds grander than it is. At some point early in her opulent marriage, old Mrs Shelseley had commissioned an extension on the back of the Lodge specifically for parties. The structure the architects had devised was around forty feet square, elegantly proportioned, with a line of French windows down one side leading out into the gardens. A row of dusty chandeliers hung from the high ceiling.
Apart from children's birthdays, and at Christmas, the room was mostly idle now, although I understand that events there used to be the height of the local social calendar. Tris still calls it the ballroom, with hazy childhood memories of a more glorious age. Ailsa just calls it a bugger to heat. I used it for my classes and for that it was perfect. It even had a proper sprung wooden dance floor.
As I came in I found just about everyone gathered round where Ailsa was urgently speaking to them. Half the people present turned to glance at me, then shifted their attention back to Ailsa.
“Look, I'm sure it's just a coincidence,” she said. “The police would have said if there was any reason to be concerned, surely? There's nothing to worry about. Please.”
She was trying to be reassuring, but there was a note of strain in her voice that belied her soothing words. Like Tris, Ailsa wore her hair short, making her head seem too small for her body. She wore large silver hoops in her pierced ears, that caught the light and jingled slightly as she spoke.
Whatever the discussion had been, my arrival seemed to mark its closure. The women dispersed, muttering, clutching children who were unnaturally quiet and well-behaved. It was probably that which unnerved me the most.
“Ailsa?” I said, moving forwards. “What's the matter?”
“Oh hello, Charlie love,” she said. She sank onto an elderly brocade chair, shoulders slumped, looking more tired than I'd ever seen her. “Some of the girls are a bit bothered by this Susie Hollins thing, that's all.”
I must have looked a little baffled. Attacks on women happen, as most of the residents could testify first hand. It still didn't quite explain the council of war. Ailsa saw my expression and gave a heavy sigh.
“They were both here,” she said reluctantly.
“What do you mean, both here? Who was?” But even as I asked the question, I knew. It came to me with a sense of creeping awareness that as soon as Susie Hollins had climbed onto the stage at the New Adelphi Club, I'd known that I'd seen her before.
“Susie and the other girl who was raped,” Ailsa confirmed. “In fact, Susie was only here a month or so ago. That boyfriend of hers, Tony, has a hair-trigger temper and a jealous streak, which is not a good combination at the best of times. He'd convinced himself that she was seeing someone else, apparently, and beat her up. She spent about three days here, I think, swearing long and loud that she was finished with him for good. Then he came round grovelling and back she went.” Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Like a lamb to the slaughter.”
She suddenly seemed to realise the macabre aptness of the expression. Her mouth formed a soundless oh, and her eyes began to fill.
Tris patted her shoulder, looking awkward. “Come on, love,” he murmured. He was trying to be bracing, but there was a note of panic there that only men get when faced with a woman about to cry.
Ailsa gave him a wan smile, sniffed, and made a determined effort to pull herself together. “I'm all right,” she said. “Really. I must get on, there's so much to do. I just don't know what to say to them to convince them they're over-reacting, that's all.” She got to her feet, moving as far as the doorway before she paused. “Two of the girls have left already, you know,” she said. “Just packed their bags and went. They never even said goodbye.”
“It's their loss, Ailsa,” I said. “You put your heart and soul into this place. They won't find anywhere better.”
She nodded jerkily a couple of times, grateful for the support and still trying to hold back the tears. “I know, it's just—” she trailed off, then finished with feeling, “Oh, bloody men!” and stamped away down the corridor.
I turned to find Tris standing where she'd left him, looking downcast.
“I wouldn't take it personally,” I told him.
He sighed. “I stopped doing that a long time ago,” he said. “Otherwise I would have thrown myself off a cliff by now.”
Six
The class I taught late that afternoon was packed, mainly with Lodge residents. It seemed that just about all the women at Shelseley had suddenly decided that self-defence was a subject they could no longer afford to ignore.
I had planned to teach them how to escape from a pinned-down potential rape situation on the ground, and had dragged out the heavy crashmats ready, but at the last minute I changed my mind. Something told me that particular lesson would have been a little too emotive right now. I went through wrist locks instead, and came away vaguely regretting that I'd chickened out.
Afterwards, I stuck my head round Tris and Ailsa's door to find Ailsa alone, poring over what looked like books of accounts. She invited me in for a cup of chamomile tea. I accepted more to be sociable than because I especially like the stuff.
“It was busier than I was expecting,” I said as she poured the straw-coloured liquid from a chipped Wedgwood teapot.
“Well, love, I suppose I can't say I'm surprised,” she said, but her eyes had drifted back to the books in front of her. Distracted, she brushed a hand through her spiky hair.
I put my head on one side and regarded her. “What happens if they all leave?” I asked quietly.
Her hand stilled, then dropped. “We struggle,” she said briefly, closed the book and sighed. “When old Mrs Shelseley died she left us some money to maintain the house for as long as it remains a refuge, but we had to re-roof the entire place about four years ago, and that ate up most of the capital. We get grant money, and some charity funding, but the bulk of it comes from social services, and to be honest, Charlie, that's what pays the bills. We can't afford to lose them.”
She looked about to say more, but a commotion had kicked up in the hallway outside, and Ailsa paused as she worked out if it was serious enough to warrant her intervention. Years of experience had tuned her senses to the point where she could instantly recognise the difference between the screams of a playfully violent children's game, and those which greeted the unexpected arrival of a drunken ex-husband and father.
It was soon clear that this was neither. After only a moment's hesitation, Ailsa was on her feet and moving for the doorway with the sort of speed you wouldn't expect from a woman of her size. Slower in mind, if not in body, I was half a stride behind.
We weren't alone in recognising an emergency in progress. Doors were opening all along the hallway, and up on the landing as well. There were already half a dozen women in the hall itself, clustered round a dark-haired girl in her late teens or early twenties. She was slumped on her knees by the bottom of the stairs, clutching at the ornate newel post like a drowning swimmer, and wailing.
“Oh God,” Ailsa muttered. She hurried forwards and bent close to the girl. “Nina, love, what is it? What's happened?”
The girl turned her face in the direction of the voice, but her eyes had that thousand-yard stare of deep shock.
“O-outside,” she managed at last. She swallowed a couple of times, her throat working convulsively. “There w-was a man. Outside.”
Ailsa threw me a single pleading look over her shoulder. I gave her a slight nod, knowing immediately what she was asking of me. This wasn't the time to argue, and besides, the girl, Nina, had started to shudder and shake. I thought there was more than a fair chance she was going t
o throw up, which didn't make me eager to hang around here.
I stepped round both of them, heading for the open doorway, and the darkness beyond it. The group melted back to let me through. Nobody offered to walk with me, but then, I hadn't really expected them to.
I went down the stone steps and moved quickly to the side of the house. I stood there for a minute or so, out of the sweep of light flooding from the un-curtained windows, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and my nerves to steady.
The pause gave me chance to listen for the sounds of movement, but there was nothing apart from the rattle of wind across bare branches, the hum of traffic from the main road, and the jump of my own heart.
I was mildly surprised to find that I wasn't scared, though. Not that mind-numbing fear that freezes your blood. Instead, I could feel my senses dilating, my instincts reaching out into the night. Rather than dulling my responses, apprehension was serving to give me a sharper edge.
I had no doubts that if the girl said she'd seen a man lurking out here, she was probably right. His intentions might be sinister, but I was determined that I was not afraid of him, whoever he was.
I'd been down that road once before, and had returned coated with the bitter grime of pain and experience. I had so nearly not come back at all. It was interesting to know some good had come of the journey.
I eased myself away from the wall and tried to walk quietly across the gravel, which was an impossibility even in bare feet, never mind in the heavy-soled bike boots I'd changed into after the class. Every few strides I had to pause to clear the echo of my own footsteps from my ears.
I spent a quarter-hour moving as silently as I could through the area surrounding the drive. I wasn't stupid enough to force my way deep into the undergrowth. It would have been asking for trouble.
Even so, I found no trace of an intruder. Nothing.
By the time I got back into the hallway, the crowd had mostly disbanded. One or two of the hardier ones were lurking on the stairs. They asked me if I'd spotted anyone, and took my negative answer with sceptical smiles. Whether that was because they doubted there was anyone to find, or because they thought I was just trying to allay their fears, I couldn't be sure.