Guy Fawkes Day

by K J Griffin

  Bailey grunted, busy with the cooking. From the dip below came the sound of restless baboons. Beyond them, hyenas were howling. Bailey asked her to shine the lamp over the fire while he dished out the food.

  They ate in silence, sitting side by side on the tree stump. The food tasted salty, smoky and simple, but Sophie was ravenous, and she spooned down the stew like a hungry labourer in a farmer’s kitchen. After food came more beer and some smokes. In the mellowness of sated desire, she even accepted his offer of a cigar.

  ‘So you left the army after the massacre, never to return to England?’

  He turned sharply towards her. Close up in the firelight the anger flickered in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, no, Sophie, I didn’t leave the army,’ he growled, loud and bitter. ‘You don’t just walk away from the Parachute Regiment and say, ‘Sorry chaps, ’fraid it’s not my cup of tea after all’. Oh no, nothing like that, I can assure you. The best was still to come.’

  Sophie waited for a minute out of respect, aware that he might be deliberately playacting his emotion to win over her sympathy. Behind them, a full moon was rising, already strong enough for Bailey to lean over and turn out the paraffin lamp.

  ‘For a whole week nothing much happened. We sat miserably in barracks, avoiding the newspapers, avoiding each other. Towards the end of the week rumours started to fly. The atmosphere inside the platoon was treacherous and poisonous. I knew that Goss was busy with the men, bullying them into line. I knew how he’d put it, too—‘all for one and one for all’—that sort of stuff. But with Goss, all and one meant the same thing: him. I should have fought back, gone straight to the regimental commanding officer to make my move against Goss and Easterby. I should have called the men together, reassured them and got them behind me, but I didn’t bother with any of that. I felt so sick of it all, I just wanted out of the army, and in a way, that’s what they gave me.’

  He got up to collect and stow the plates and pan. Sophie sat silent. He knew he was winning her sympathy.

  ‘In classic army style,’ he continued from the fireside, ‘they came for me at five o’clock in the morning, exactly one week after the massacre. I was taken to Company HQ and locked up in a cold dark cell, where I spent the whole morning sitting on a bed with a sandpaper blanket wrapped around my shoulders, staring into an enamel slops bowl. In the afternoon the Colonel was ready for me. He interviewed me in his office, apologized for the formal arrest, and hinted that I would be released soon. He listened carefully to my story and made me repeat Major Easterby’s words exactly as I had heard them over the radio before the shooting began. Had Major Easterby really ordered me to fire on the crowd? Or had I given that interpretation to his words in the heat of the moment?’

  ‘The Colonel was a tall, thin and bony man with a reputation for detached severity. I told him about Goss’s role in the massacre. The Colonel listened without comment, thanked me, and allowed me to return to my quarters.’

  Sophie could feel the onset of impending tragedy. The story had gripped her attention, but in the present surroundings, it left her feeling strangely confused. Great outdoors, sky dripping with overripe stars, animals scuffling in the bush, insects pulsating. It was like a scout camp on safari—except the ghost story round the campfire was turning out to be horrifically true.

  ‘Three more days passed. The rest of the Company returned to active duty, but my platoon was still confined to barracks. On the fourth morning after the interview with the Colonel they came for me again. But this time the duty sergeant placed me under formal arrest. I assumed that Easterby, Goss and other members of my platoon were also under lock and key, and that we would face each other later at the inquiry.’

  ‘But it didn’t happen like that. They put me in a Land Rover and took me to the airbase. That night I was in an Army prison cell in Catterick, where I learnt that I had been singled out to face a court-martial the next month, charged with the manslaughter of 12 civilians. I couldn’t believe it! What about Goss and Easterby? I screamed out from my cell down the dim, disinfected prison corridors. Why hadn’t Goss and Easterby been arrested, too? It didn’t make any sense.’

  ‘That first night in Catterick I started to panic. Since the morning after the massacre, the British and international press had been screaming for a full inquiry and for strong disciplinary action to be taken against those responsible. At first that had sounded all right to me. The sooner they got Easterby and Goss under lock and key the better! Only then in Catterick did the possibility occur to me that I was being set up to take the blame. The army needed a scapegoat, someone who could be held responsible for what had happened without looking evil enough to create any far-reaching shockwaves for the future of British troops in Northern Ireland. Of course, I was the perfect candidate. A young, inexperienced second lieutenant would make a better sacrificial lamb than an upper class major or a veteran sergeant. The top brass would be able to say, Falls Road fiasco? Ah, yes, young, excitable lieutenant lost his nerve under fire. Very sad affair, but these things happen.’

  ‘And that’s precisely how they played it. I faced a court-martial of five senior officers, then watched and listened in silence as every private and NCO in my platoon came forward under oath to testify that I had been responsible for the order to fire. They were nervous and shifty; at least none of them had the cheek to look me in the eyes while they trotted out their lies. Not that I blamed them so much for what they were doing, especially the younger lads. They’d all been brainwashed or intimidated by, Goss, Easterby, and (as I later found out) even by the regimental CO. I think that some of those poor cretins actually believed what they were saying.’

  ‘Goss was the first of the big fish to testify to the court-martial. He looked me straight in the eyes throughout, enjoying every minute of it, as if he were slowly boring a blunt pencil into my eyeball. You couldn’t break a man like Goss down under questioning just as you couldn’t wear him down under fire. He stuck unshakably to his story. According to him, Major Easterby had told me over the radio to, ‘Cool the situation.’ I had ignored the Major, panicked, and ordered the men to open fire; Goss saw that I had lost it and countermanded my order. A scuffle broke out between him and me. I broke free and opened fire on the crowd with his SLR. Other less-experienced members of the platoon panicked in turn and followed my lead. Gospel according to Sergeant Phil Goss: Massacre, one of, particularly ugly issue, properly accounted for, sir. QED.’

  ‘Major Easterby followed Goss to the witness box. Same story told with more aplomb and reserve, as befitted a gentleman officer. But the best was yet to come. The regimental commanding officer was the last witness for the prosecution. He backed up everything Goss and Easterby had said, described my character as moody and unreliable, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on the case for the prosecution. And it soon became quite obvious that the regimental CO was a personal friend of four of the five judges. My fate was sealed. They gave me seven years for manslaughter, exonerated Goss and Major Easterby from the allegations I had made against them, and gave the regimental CO a promotion. Less than a year later, my friend the Colonel left the Paras to embark on the political career he had apparently been sniffing at for a while. It seems that his pals in government were relieved at the very swift and public way in which justice had been seen to be carried out and public outrage softened. They gave him a safe seat and welcomed him to the club.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Sophie asked. ‘Is he still in politics today?’

  Bailey snorted contemptuously. ‘Yes, he’s still there today. Switched parties twice—not that there’s much difference between Labour and the Conservatives any more. Now he has been rewarded for his pragmatic approach to politics by gaining the position of foreign secretary under today’s regime.’

  ‘James McPherson!’ Sophie gasped, ‘Christ, you mean McPherson was your regimental commanding officer?’

  She stood up from the tree stump in surprise. ‘Wow!’ she repeated several times over, perplexed
and enthralled.

  Only half an hour ago she had been brimming with a dull anger for ‘Omar’. Now her fury had now wilted to a confused mess. There was too much information to take on board in one go, some of it as incredibly unlikely as the beauty of all those rich and creamy stars overhead. ‘Omar’ had thrust her centre-stage and unrehearsed into the midst of a complex drama, and she wasn’t sure which characters to trust, fear, like or love.

  ‘Seven years,’ he muttered wistfully to himself, pulling on his cheroot.

  ‘I was twenty-two when I began my sentence. Can you imagine it, Sophie? If someone were to show you a tiny cell inside four strong plaster-coated walls and tell you that you were going to spend seven years of your young life there? Seven years! Do you know what that means? Three hundred and sixty four weeks. Two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days. Sixty-one thousand, three hundred and twenty hours. You get the feel?’

  She shivered despite the warm night air.

  ‘As you can see, you get plenty of time to think, plenty of time to brood, plenty of time to strip yourself of all the emotions you took into the place. But far worse than the pain and loneliness was the acceptance. They were wrong, I was right. What could I do about it? Nothing. ‘Learn to grin and bear it, son,’ the Military Police guys kept reminding me. ‘You’ll be out in four or less, you’ll see. Army always looks after its own, no matter what you’ve done!’

  ‘For the first ten months, that was what I did. Probably I would have carried on like that for the remainder of my time, watching TV, reading trashy thrillers, perfecting my table tennis. But something far more painful happened, something that hurt me in its own way every bit as much as what Goss, Easterby and McPherson had concocted.’

  Sophie waited for him to continue, but not impatiently, thanks to the mellow buzz from the grass she had just smoked. The baboons filled his silence, and in the distance a series of deeper, panting groans.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked eventually, staring into the distance as if in a trance.

  ‘Lion.’

  ‘No. What happened to you in prison?’

  He stood up and crushed the end of his cheroot under a boot. They were standing cheek to cheek in front of the fire, looking out over the dip below that was bathed in silver light. Sophie felt his eyes on her and turned to look at them. It was the malicious, vampiric smile of the early days, only this time, worse than ever. Far worse.

  ‘That’s another story, Sophie. Another story for another place.’ His voice had become distant again, as if it belonged more to the backdrop of animal noises.

  Sophie sighed and looked away. She was struggling with too many emotions, some her own, some felt on behalf of all the characters in ‘Omar’s’ drama, and another feeling for ‘Omar’ that she had been trying to choke back for some time. But she understood none of them clearly. And in the turbulence of emotions, she believed in none of them, just as she refused to believe that she was standing on a warm night on the East African savannah, listening to the magical sounds of the restless night, and watching a myriad of stars, planets and galaxies, all of them spawned from a sub-atomic singularity of immeasurable smallness and immeasurable mass.

  Finally, she looked at him again.

  ‘There’s one thing I must know, Omar—or Robert—or whatever your name is now. One thing that worries me more than anything else.’

  He smiled elliptically for her to continue, his teeth shining ghostly in the moonlight.

  ‘I’ve noticed that too many of the people from your past seem to haunt your present. Nothing seems to happen by accident in your life. I want to know where I fit in. Why am I here now? What’s my role in your schemes, Omar?’

  He swallowed audibly.

  ‘If you could choose your role and your meaning here tonight, Sophie, what would it be?’

  She had to look away abruptly, embarrassed by the unsolicited thought that had just struck her. She would have believed he could read minds.

  ‘Are you trying to get at Marcus through me, by taking me away from him? Are you trying to punish Colonel Easterby’s son for the guilt of his father?’

  He laughed briefly, this time with some humour.

  ‘That would be an amusing, but very coincidental bonus, I can assure you. But tell me, Sophie, am I…taking you away from Marcus—your affections, I mean?’

  She looked away:

  ‘I say, Omar, why is there only one tent? You didn’t plan on one last ‘bed duty’, I suppose.’

  He took hold of her forearm and found her eyes.

  ‘I never use tents.’

  She stared at him for some time, mesmerized by the glow of the firelight on his cheeks.

  ‘Then neither do I.’

  He reached out with his other hand and pulled her close, running a hand through a plume of long, rich hair, then up against the back of her neck, stroking its base and resting his hand against her lips, before pulling her gently into an embrace.

  They swayed to and fro, locked together, kissing deeply. He broke off sharply, walked to the tent, and returned, dragging a mattress to the fireside. Everything was methodical with him, mixed with short, frenzied bouts of passion that seemed disturbingly genuine.

  Sophie let him coax her to the mattress and unpeel her clothes one by one, until they stood naked side-by-side, standing on the soft foam. She sensed the danger in what she was about to do, but the drink, the drama, and above all the vitality of the night air made her more determined to go through with it. She loved him and hated him, didn’t know which impulse to believe. But intense feeling was there, and whatever it was, she knew she had to explore it to its conclusion.

  End of Part One

  If you have enjoyed this book, please look out for Part 2 coming soon on iBooks. Please also recommend this book to all your friends and contacts via social media or email.