Kicking Off

by Jan Needle

  It was a long evening, a longer night, a fraught few days. But very soon - although details were sparse and contradictory - the simple words had flown around the world: Hess is dead. The same words, oddly, had been doodled on his scribbling pad by Winston Churchill.

  That had been in 1941.

  Two

  A month before the death at Spandau, on the morning of his son's eleventh birthday, Bill Wiley was called from Northern Ireland to a hotel in Lancashire to help to solve a problem in Berlin. He was not sure who or what the problem was, and had far more urgent things to think about. He left the house at a run, fury fighting with despair in his stomach, and almost forgot to check beneath his new Q-car. He gripped the door handle, and stared back at the house. His son's face appeared at the bedroom window, white and stressed. This could not go on.

  The bomb check took half a minute, and the routine calmed him. When Wiley straightened up, he was in control. A group of women were close as well, with buggies and a dog. Some toddlers, too. Three of the women knew him and smiled tentatively, although he was not popular, because they liked Liz too much. To Army wives, the story was well known, happiness in marriage was not the norm. They glanced at No 23, the lace curtains, the red-painted door. Soon it would open and Liz would bring out Johnnie, and join the others in the trek to school. Johnnie was eleven today, there was going to be a party.

  'Poor little bastard!' Liz had been screaming, barely five minutes earlier. 'What sort of a birthday is it, anyway! Ten to three this morning you got in, and you're like a dishcloth! He comes into the bedroom and you shout at him, you bastard, you shout at him! You pig, you utter pig. And you won't be here tonight, will you? You won't have remembered the party, will you? Or the present, or a bloody card! Go on, get out. Go to work. Go and be a hero. Go and drive your nice new car.'

  Liz's face was long, and white. Her pupils dilated, and she looked about her, wildly, as if for something to throw at him. He was dispassionate for a moment, felt a pang of pain and pity for her as a human being, not a wife. The pupils were probably dilated with the drugs, he thought. Jesus Christ, how had it come to this?

  'Liz,' he said. 'Please. I got in late. I was exhausted. I know, I know! It's not an excuse, it's my job, OK! But I'll make it up to him. Johnnie understands. He'll let me off.'

  'Well he shouldn't! You've got no right to be let off. You're a selfish, piggish, piggish…'

  She ran out of steam and Wiley pulled the front door open and shouted up the stairs: 'Come on John. I know you're up there! For God's sake come and tell your Mum you still love your selfish bastard of a father. It's upsetting her.

  Johnnie was at the doorway, in his pyjamas. His face was pale, but then it always was, he got that from his mother. He smiled, but it was a pretty miserable affair.

  'Will you be?' he said. 'Honestly? Here tonight?'

  'Yes, I will be here, it's all arranged. Unless Paisley runs off with the Pope, I'm off tonight, OK? And I've got a birthday present lined up for you, to collect. I might be a bastard, but I'm not a total one. It's your birthday, for God's sake. Big school next term.'

  Johnnie nodded, seriously. He was a quiet boy, small for his age, thin and wiry. Like his mother, he was not wild about the place they lived, although he did not actively hate it, as she did. He had his computer, and there were two or three other boys of his own age in the married quarters to play football with, and one especial friend living in another Army enclave at Holywood, whom he met as often as possible to play chess with. The thing he hated most was the lack of Bill. Until they had come to Ireland two years before they had spent an enormous amount of time together, they had been best friends.

  While John was getting his school clothes on, Bill returned to the kitchen. He was dressed for work - jeans, trainers and a sweatshirt - and he had trimmed his moustache in front of the dressing-table mirror. He hoped the fight was over, and he was holding a small pair of scissors as part of the truce. He waved them. 'There's a bit sticking up my nose. I can never get it without risk of bleeding to death. Give us a snip will you, love?'

  Liz did not move. Her eyes were on him, bright with misery.

  'You're trying to turn my son against me,' she said. 'You're trying to make me into the nagging, carping wife.'

  'What?'

  His surprise was genuine, but his wife did not believe that.

  'You had forgotten, hadn't you, you liar? And you haven't got a bloody present, waiting to be collected.'

  'I have! It's up in Belfast! I'm going up there!'

  'Liar! What is it then? Tell me!'

  'Don't be stupid, Liz. John'll hear you. It's a surprise.'

  'It will be, when he doesn't get it! You don't even know what a boy of his age likes! You don't even know how bloody old he is!'

  Her voice was rising, and Wiley felt his hands, involuntarily, form into fists. In one of them, like a dagger, he held the scissors. He became aware of them as a shock. He lowered his own voice, a counterpart to hers, he was prepared for pleading.

  'Liz, darling, please. It's all right. I've got the present, it's even paid for. For G— For John 's sake, keep your voice down. Please.'

  'No!' she screamed. 'I won't! I'll fucking shout my head off, if I want to! I won't keep quiet!'

  'Liz! For Christ's sake!'

  Johnnie was at the door once more, his white face whiter, like a sheet. Bill felt the small chrome scissors collapse within his fist. He hurled them to the floor.

  'John,' he said. 'I'm going to work. Your mother…Look, son…'

  'And he won't be back!' screeched Liz, big tears pouring from her eyes and down her face. 'Whatever he says, he won't be back.'

  Bill moved towards her, forced himself to stop and turn, and went towards the door. He said to Johnnie: 'We'll talk. We'll see a doctor,' and Johnnie turned and ran, crashing into the newel post. Liz was rushing at him, so Bill side-stepped and broke her forward moment, prevented her from hurting her body against the kitchen wall.

  'I'll ring,' he said, opening the door.

  She picked a beaker off the work-top - light, plastic, useless - and flung it at him. It bounced off the closing door. 'I hope you die,' she said.

  Bill Wiley, on the other side of the kitchen door, tried to control himself. It was despair, not fury, despair in hot black waves. Then he heard Liz tear open the other door.

  'Johnnie,' she called. 'Hurry up. You've got to go to school.'

  Her voice was changed, although still shaky. She sounded almost calm. Bill closed his eyes.

  Then Liz said, 'We'll go and get you something extra, Johnnie. After school. Your daddy won't be back , you know. He won't be back.'

  Bill could either leave, or he could go back into the kitchen and kill her.

  So he left.

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