The Watchers

by Neil Spring

  ‘Robert, the phone!’

  Somehow getting out of bed at that moment was easier than usual. But it was the window that held me back from going out into the hall to the phone.

  ‘Robert!’

  ‘Just a second.’

  I did try to resist the urge to check the window, like I tried every day, but it was too strong. My gaze focused on the catch, making sure it was still in place. Then I tapped the frame, left side first, then the top, and finally the windowsill. It had to be done strictly in that order, otherwise I’d get as far as the bedroom door before going back to do it all again. And again.

  Ringgg . . . ringgg . . . ringgg . . .

  I padded across the wood flooring of our narrow hallway, taking care to avoid Selina’s half-unpacked suitcase, and plucked the telephone from its cradle on the wall.

  ‘Hello?’

  The line crackled. No one spoke.

  ‘Hello?’ I said again.

  The muffled static sound continued for another five, perhaps ten, seconds before three loud clicks sounded and the line went dead.

  Three clicks.

  Good. That means he wants to see me.

  ‘Who is it?’ Selina asked from her bedroom.

  ‘No one,’ I answered.

  I went into the living room and sat down in the semi-darkness on the small yellow couch Selina’s parents had given her before she had rented me her spare room. Everything about the flat was yellow and orange and brown, and though I hated the modern decor and the claustrophobic feel of the space, its location – Vauxhall – was perfect for work, and to share with Selina, even just as flatmates, was its own pleasure.

  There, before me on the coffee table, next to two empty wine glasses, was the thick file of local newspaper cuttings Selina and I had discussed before bed.

  We’re getting reports every day now, Robert. Twenty-two in just twelve months. All from around St Brides Bay. Even the coastguard doesn’t understand . . .

  I opened the file. The lurid headlines screamed up at me: SCIENTISTS BAFFLED BY MYSTERY RUMBLINGS . . . EXPERTS PREDICT MORE SIGHTINGS.

  I tossed the cuttings aside, unfazed. During my time on the Defence Select Committee I’d become something of an expert on military activity in our skies. Balloons, unusual plane manoeuvres, aircraft observed in unusual atmospheric conditions; so many prosaic explanations for ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’. I could still remember my grandfather’s voice warning me about dark forces, fires in the sky. I hadn’t yielded then to his fanatical paranoia that mischievous beings were watching us from above, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to do so now.

  I switched on the radio; Johnny Rotten’s voice filled the room. The Sex Pistols were singing that Britain had no future, and I was wondering if they might have the right idea. I snapped it off and went instead to the television: crowds demonstrating outside nuclear power plants, Jimmy Carter addressing the United Nations on mounting tensions with the Soviet Union. Nothing but wars and rumours of wars, missile proliferation, arms treaties. The new US president was going to have his work cut out.

  We all were.

  ‘It can’t have been no one, Robert. At this hour?’

  I looked up to see Selina framed in the living-room doorway, slender as a willow, a blue towel rather disappointingly covering her breasts, though the sight of her still-damp thighs was pretty gratifying.

  I said, ‘Wrong number, that’s all,’ not seriously expecting her to accept that answer but knowing I had to say something.

  ‘But that’s the fourth call this week.’

  ‘We’ll sort it. Selina, listen, there’s something I need to ask—’

  ‘You think it’s intentional?’ she interrupted, going to the kitchen counter. ‘Someone making trouble?’

  She looked straight at me as she flicked the kettle on, working her jaw slightly, the way she always did when something was bothering her. I gave her my best smile, which she usually met with her own wonderfully calming one, but not today. Concern lingered on her face, and there was an unfamiliar glimmer in her eyes.

  I heard myself say, ‘We mustn’t forget to lock the flat when we leave today, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But really, we must lock the flat.’

  ‘I know, Robert.’

  I managed to swallow the third iteration. She saw my tight jaw and looked away. Sorry for me or just weary of me?

  Shit. I wanted to punch myself. I wanted to tell her how traumatizing it was, to convey some sense of the isolation never being certain about something as simple as locking a door or window caused. Doctors had used all sorts of words to describe the way I was – words like obsessive and compulsive and paranoid – but no matter how hard they searched for some reason, some trigger, they could find none.

  Even if there was a trigger, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it was.

  What I certainly did want was to make Selina, anyone, understand. It didn’t matter how long I searched through my mind for reassurance or how long it took me to carry out my checks, the answers would never satisfy my uncertainty. It was like suffering from bowel cancer but only having the vocabulary to describe a mild stomach ache.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently.

  ‘Take a break when the evidence sessions are over, please. You need to let out the frustration. Trust me, I know.’

  Selina had a job interview in the City today. I wished her well, of course, but I’d miss her terribly if she got it. We had worked together for Paul Bestford, chairman of the Defence Select Committee and MP for Pembrokeshire, since leaving university. And during those three years I’d come to rely on her calm common sense and support.

  ‘What time’s your interview?’

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  ‘But you’ll miss the start of the committee session.’

  ‘This is your crusade, boyo.’ A playful attempt to remind me of my Welsh connections. ‘You don’t need me. You’ll be fine.’

  I wasn’t so sure. There was only one thing worse than dealing with unreliable witnesses: an unreliable committee chairman whose relationship with the bottle was becoming the subject of whispers in the Palace of Westminster’s many bars. In Parliament the gossip flowed as freely as the wine, and I could tell from the way the other researchers muttered about our boss that they thought his time was limited. And I needed Bestford.

  It was easy to remember the first time I met him. He’d come to our school after the ‘Great Flood’ and given a talk about all the reinforcements to the sea walls that would make the Havens safe again. I carried that memory with me into adulthood. And by the time I had left university at twenty-two, he was chair of the Defence Select Committee. I got the job as soon as I applied. Partly because I understood the constituency and its issues, mostly because I was passionate about scrutinizing defence policy.

  ‘Call in afterwards, if you have time. Please?’

  ‘I’ll try my best. Robert,’ she said after a pause, ‘do you think I’m making the right decision?’

  I nodded and said encouragingly, ‘It’s your time to move on,’ even though I felt the opposite.

  I saw her now with me: the countless hours together on the campaign trail in Broad Haven, pounding pavements, knocking on doors. She’d had that natural way with people that made them smile and talk about their problems as though they really believed we could help. Her entire life was politics, no doubt about that, but on those doorsteps she had so easily shown interest in television chat shows, music and supermarkets. Me, I dealt in facts, numbers and statistics, and the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases. It had come to divide us: Selina was afraid Bestford was losing touch, that the Cold War and his work with me on the committee was two steps too far from the rugged realities of country living for farming folk to demonstrate their understanding at the ballot box.

  Still, tod
ay was a very important day. And still we were a team. We had to be. Parliament was an odd place, perhaps not quite the madhouse you saw on television, but certainly the only environment where you might catch an MP throwing a punch at a bar or happen across the prime minister dabbing a coffee stain from his tie. I’d grown sick of the smiles and handshakes that concealed hidden agendas and the constant tensions about the issues bringing the country to its knees. After the late-night votes you would overhear MPs in the bars muttering glumly about the forthcoming ‘collapse’. I was tired of hearing that too. It wasn’t just the picket lines and fear of the country’s lights going out again; it was something more profound. We had lost our way.

  Selina looked straight at me. ‘You could leave too, you know. Pursue a proper career.’

  I smiled at that even as I was trying not to remember Mum saying the very same thing to Dad when we lived at RAF Brawdy. She had hated everything the military stood for, not just the wars, weapons and lies but the injustice. It was an era when America kept nuclear weapons on British soil, just in case the Cold War turned hot. She argued that criminal activities were taking place on our own soil, that American bases in the UK were accountable to no one but the Pentagon. And these days I mostly think she was right.

  ‘I mean it, Robert. Perhaps it’s time for us both to get out.’

  As Selina waited for me to say something in defence of our dubious profession, I found myself staring at the photo of my parents on the mantelpiece, a family snapshot, creased and faded. All at once I was a child again.

  The photograph had been taken outside RAF Brawdy’s main gate. Dad’s face was stonily set as he frowned at the middle distance, behind the photographer. I was distracted by something in the sky. Mum, meanwhile, was wearing a smile that did nothing to conceal her defeat. Her anger. She was also wearing a patch that covered her left eye.

  On the morning of Thursday 8 February 1963 – ten months before Mum and Dad lost their lives in the Havens Great Flood – peace activists surrounded RAF Croughton, a US Air Force base and CIA relay station in Northamptonshire, and cut through the perimeter fence. Their mission? To draw attention to the deadly nuclear arsenal they believed was illegally stored on the base. RAF Croughton was one of the most important bases in NATO, and though my father had known Mum was attending the protest, he hadn’t known what she and the others intended to do. Had he known there’s no way he would have allowed her to go. Trespassing was still trespassing, even if the protestors only wanted to plant a peace flag. Except something went wrong. Something terrible. I remembered Mum leaving the eye department at the hospital in Haverfordwest. Back when the Beatles were top of the charts. I remembered her complaining for months about nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and weakness. She used to say her eyes were burning, as though they’d suffered sunburn. By the time December came, painful blisters were forming on her skin, and she had lost clumps of hair.

  What had happened at Croughton? There were rumours of an incident on the base that night, an explosion of some sort, and Mum, along with the others, was arrested for criminal damage. Precisely what had happened remained a mystery, partly because Mum didn’t remember, mostly because the British and American governments hadn’t accepted the need for an official inquiry. They were stonewalling. They had been stonewalling for fourteen years, and I still wanted to know why. I wanted to know why Mum’s medical records from that night had gone missing. I needed justice.

  It was what I had been working towards all this time – since Ravenstone, since I was old enough to believe I might make a difference – finding out something about that night that others had missed. Today was the day I might finally get to the bottom of it.

  ‘Selina, I need your advice.’

  She nodded, smiled.

  ‘Remember those military expenditure figures I mentioned?’

  ‘You mean the classified figures?’

  I nodded and watched her eyebrows draw together. It was the same look she gave me whenever I suggested us drafting a politically bold – which meant risky – speech for Bestford.

  ‘I’m thinking of using them today in the session. Taking Colonel Corso by surprise.’

  She shifted uneasily. ‘Robert, I don’t know where you got them, but those figures are highly classified. Inadmissible.’

  But still evidence, said a voice in my head.

  ‘Thirty million spent on upgrading security at RAF Croughton since the protests! Something called Project Caesar. I don’t know what it is, but it’s some sort of black operation – has to be. It could help me find out what happened that night. They’re hiding something. Selina, I need to know what it is.’

  Her smile had vanished. I think it was starting to dawn on her that I might never let this drop.

  For weeks Bestford and I had rehearsed the questions he would put that afternoon to Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Corso, the last in a very long line of American military witnesses who stood accused of covering up whatever had happened at RAF Croughton in February 1963. For reasons of ‘national security’ the inquiry had been delayed again and again. Any longer and we might never have discovered the truth. But now we were finally making progress. If we were lucky, the secret memo in my possession could be the smoking gun we needed.

  I tried to make her see. ‘Without those figures, all we have to go on is rumour and speculation. Mum would have wanted me to do this. I need to know why she was injured, Selina. I have to prove they were keeping nuclear weapons on the base!’

  ‘Where did you get this document, Robert?’

  I held my tongue as she stared at me.

  ‘Does Bestford know you have it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you need to be damn sure he has your back! No risks. Remember, you signed the Official Secrets Act.’ She considered me for a long moment with an expression somewhere between frustration and admiration, all the while fingering the delicate silver crucifix around her neck. ‘You do a lot for him. More than you should – you know that?’

  I felt a need to acknowledge the ongoing issue to which she was referring – Bestford’s shaky appearances on the floor of the House; his raging moods when he woke from his drunken sleeps – but there was nothing I could add that Selina didn’t already know.

  ‘You can’t allow his behaviour to go on for much longer, Robert. The risks to you and the party are enormous.’

  She was right. Problem was, I didn’t care much for the party, a ramshackle collection of loud, aggressive old union men. I didn’t feel part of a group, not in Parliament, not anywhere. I was in this for answers, that was all.

  Suddenly I felt my heart pound, and deep within my brain the distracting rhythm of another thought began to beat: Did you lock the office door before you left yesterday?

  Yes, I answered. I remember doing it.

  But you might be wrong, came the cruel taunt.

  Once again that awful, familiar frozen feeling in my head made me doubt myself, to imagine the worst. What if I hadn’t locked the door? What if someone had broken in, stolen all our files? What if? What if? What if?

  ‘Robert, are you all right?’

  Was I? I wasn’t sure. I squeezed my eyes shut and returned to Selina’s concerns about Bestford’s drinking. I knew our boss was far from perfect and wanted to help him if I could. There weren’t many MPs who would tolerate my doubts and anxious distractions. He had been good to me.

  ‘Robert?’

  I nodded and tried to smile. She must think I’m crazy.

  ‘You know, sometimes I think you need something else to care about, something other than your work. You could get away for a while, go back to the constituency?’

  I shuddered, remembering with a chill the loneliness and isolation, the indefinable feeling of danger, of being watched. Even though I had not been back to the Havens since I left my grandfather’s farm at eighteen, I saw it clearly. That lazy seaside communit
y, the green hill which sloped down to St Brides Bay, the cluster of houses stranded around the choppy steel-grey waters, serpentine roads clogged with fog, fishing boats tethered in a tiny cove. And, in the distance, half a mile out to sea, Stack Rocks rising menacingly from the waters.

  Selina had given up and was again sifting through the newspaper cuttings strewn across the coffee table. My gaze touched her bare shoulder again, the blue towel, her necklace, before skimming over the sensational headlines. One from late December read, YOUNG MOTHER AND CHILD IN FLYING FOOTBALL PERIL. ‘Not exactly your typical constituency casework, is it?’ I said, picking up the cutting. Hoping the article would lighten the mood, I scanned down to the body of the story.

  A single mother described yesterday how she and her daughter were followed for more than a mile by a ‘flying football’ in the latest in a spate of UFO sightings in west Wales.

  Ms Araceli Romero, proprietor of the Haven Hotel, said she was driving near Little Haven when her ten-year-old daughter Tessa spotted a light dropping from the sky towards their car.

  Ms Romero accelerated under the falling object. But Tess, watching through the back window, saw it stop and then charge at the car. She described the phenomenon as a yellow ball, about the size of a football, with a torch-like beam coming from its base . . .

  ‘I was petrified, we both were,’ Ms Romero told our reporter Frank Frobisher.

  ‘It’s a scam,’ I said, laughing. I expected Selina to laugh as well. She didn’t.

  ‘You seem very sure.’

  How many wild stories had I heard about flying saucers? Publicity seekers or people who were just too keen to believe, zealots like my grandfather deriving pathetic self-importance from fantastic tales. ‘Trust me. This woman’s just trying to drum up some bookings for her hotel.’

  That seemed likely. The Haven Hotel was a converted fortification stranded on the cliff above St Brides Bay and looked like a place of nightmares. The children at school used to say it was haunted by the ghost of the White Lady, that ancient smuggling tunnels ran from its basement through the cliffs down to the beach below. But to me the greatest mystery was why anyone would want to stay in such a grim establishment. Run by a strange Italian woman who didn’t mix with the villagers, the building, with its dusty Gothic windows, some of them broken, didn’t look anything like a hotel; it looked like the newest residence of the Addams Family.