A Line in the Sand (53 page)

, I'm begging it of you, please..

"Please

." Perry's voice quavered

to

wife's silence.

his

y it's like Khe Sanh, not that I was there."

"In a wa

ey were so nervous, as if frightened of each other. Littelbaum

Th

would

dress her.

not un

Cathy had done it herself, stripping while he had

turned his back to her to shed the old tweed suit, the crumpled shirt erclothes that weren't quite clean.

and the und

He had gentle hands

and

touched her breasts with a teenager's awe, as he lay on her,

they

was

r.

inside he

was staking out a goat. We put down a base, the middle

"Khe Sanh

of

nowhere, and we invited them to come and get us. We thought the North my would destroy itself when it came on to our wire."

Vietnamese Ar

ht it was his nerves that m'~ade him spatter out the

Cathy thoug

bullshit, and she reckoned he hadn't a woman in Riyadh, was as lonely It was a long time since she had had sex. This was

as herself.

ship-deck romance, without commitment, and in less than forty-eight hours he would be on the flight back to where he had come from. We had learned the French lessons

reckoned we had it right at Khe Sanh,

om Dien Bien Phu.

fr

The French hadn't the resources we had, but they

believed in the same principle, which was putting out a bait with

the

opportunity to smack the bad bastard when he comes sniffing..."

She was not into public-service sex. She was not available to the

, the Israelis and the Italians, who came to liaise for a few

Germans

days at Thames House. She was not a convenient bicycle for men far e.

from hom

The American was as lonely and as diffident as herself,

and

hid it behind the gruff all-knowing professionalism, as she did. She had known they would end up there, on her bed, when she had suggested brusquely that she'd cook him supper. It was what she'd thought she 350

needed after the long drive down from Derby, with the girl preying on

her mind. In her car, outside the door as she'd fished in her bag for

the keys, inside when she'd brought him the big whisky, in her bedroom where she'd led him by the hand, he'd looked like a scared cat in

a

corner. He was above her, going so slowly as if terrified of failing her, and talking.

You've got to have nerve when you get into this game, and you have to

be prepared to take casualties. The young fellow -Markham he doesn't rve, doesn't accept that foot-soldiers get hurt.

have the ne

You've

got

to go for broke we weren't prepared to at Khe Sanh, nor the French at

Dien Bien Phu. We lost, they lost, but the principle was right."

She didn't give a tinker's toss for Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu. It was

a relief to have the smell of a man with her, his weight on her, and the size of a man in her. She moved as slowly as he did and she

dreaded the end of it. She didn't care that he talked.

"You know, Cathy, I think the worm has turned."

She squeezed him. She raked his back with her short nails that she never bothered to paint, as other women did. She laughed out loud.

"Are we off goats?"

"You are a lovely, fine woman, and I regret, I apologize, I'm not doing

much good for you. We are on to worms."

"Tell me about worms."

up against him, against his bones and the wide flab of

She heaved

his

stomach. Too long since she had known it, the pleasure seeping

through

d she thrust again, and she heard

her, an

her own moan, and she was

not

lasting, and he was quickening and it was to her, lonely each day

and

351

each night, a little piece of pleasure that had no future.

"Worms can turn. The defence is in place. The guns are covering the

goat. The predator has to come. It is not acceptable to the

predator

that he goes back to his lair without a kill. He can't bug out, Cathy, o back to Tehran with an empty

can't g

gut and the odds against him

are

stacked higher, and the marksmen are waiting for him. It's turned, s the feeling in my water... turned ... advantage lost..

that'

. what

I

, Cathy..."

say... Christ

He

sped

ga

and cried out. She held him. She knew that she would never

hear from him, nor of him, again. The flight would go.

d

He looke

down

th devotion. She pushed him off.

at her wi

y. Come on, let's eat."

"I'm hungr

naked, as if the shyness was shed, to the kitchen, and heaved

She went

open the fridge. It would be instant bloody curry out of the

microwave. She heard him call, tired, with a quaver in his voice, from

the bedroom.

"The worm, might have, might just have, turned..."

"Please, I'm saying it again and again. Don't go. I can't walk away.

Once was one time too many. I'm nothing if you've gone. Do you think

't thought about it, going?

I haven

Packing and running? I have to

stand and face it, for what I did. It's nearly over, nearly

. Please stay, please."

finished..

Perry held her against him. He wondered if the detective or the men in

the hut were listening. He clung, in the darkness, to Meryl.

The cups and saucers for the coffee, the biscuit plates and the

glasses

it juice had been stacked on trays and carried away into

for the fru

the

kitchenette area. The chairs scraped the wooden floor as the

audience

352

settled. Gratifyingly, the hail was almost filled, but the Wildlife ways attracted the village's best response.

Group al

busy rounding up the last of the lost crockery. Emma

Peggy was

Carstairs was fussing with the blinds, el'~ecking they would keep

out

the nearest glow from the street-lamp. Barry fiddled with the beam from the slide projector and called for Jerry Wroughton to move the screen fractionally. Mary was helping to manoeuvre Mrs.

Wilson's wheelchair into a better position to see the screen. Mrs.

Fairbrother sat aloof in the front row, Mr. Hackett behind her, and Dominic and his partner talked softly. There were more than fifty present, a good turnout on a bad night; the numbers of village

regulars

were augmented by a few who had driven from Dunwich, a carload from Blythburgh, and more from Southwold.

ped his hands for attention and the chatter died.

Paul clap

"First, well done for coming on a filthy night. Second, apologies that

we won't be having minutes from the committee's last meeting and can't the usual list of summer speakers. I reckon most of you

hand out

know

lem we've had with getting things typed up -any volunteers?"

the prob

No

hands were raised, but there had been a growl of understanding at

the

of the problem.

mention

pleasure in welcoming Dr.

"Third, my

Julian Marks from the RSPB who

is

going to talk to us on the subject of migration. Dr. Marks..."

To generous applause, a long-haired man, with a gangling body, his face

by weather, stepped forward.

tanned

Dr. Marks said loudly, "I'm taking it I can be heard. Everyone hear me at the back yes? Excellent.

to begin with a thank-you,

I want

two,

actually. Thank you for inviting me, but more important, an especial thank-you from the RSPB for your last donation, which was an

extraordinary amount from a village of this size and reflects a very caring and decent community. Fund-raising on that scale marks this 353

y.

village as a place of warmth, a place of overwhelming generosit

Now,

ded.

migration... The lights fa

ht the screen.

The beam of the projector caug

Few in the hall's audience saw Simon and Luisa Blackmore slide

into empty seats in the back row; none present would have

soundlessly

known of her fear of crowded, bright-lit rooms.

"You know, living as you do alongside those wonderful empty

marshlands,

autiful of the migratory birds, the marsh harrier..."

the most be

"You're protected, and Stephen, and me."

"He was at the door, he was only trying to break down the fucking door.

With a gun to kill us, in our home-' "It can't happen again, I promise it's what they've told me. You can't move for men here, everywhere, protecting us.

Meryl twisted on the bed to face him. Her arms were around his neck.

She had his promise and clung to it.

Gussie, in the summer months, dug gardens in the village when he had finished at the piggery, then went home for his tea, then to the pub.

In the darker winter months, when he couldn't use the evenings to

turn

over the vegetable patches at the Carstairs' and the Wroughtons',

and

at Perry's house, he went straight home from the pig farm for his

tea,

then to the pub. After the pub, his mother, his younger brothers

and

rs already gone to bed, he sat in the chair, master of the house,

siste

and read the magazines he bought in Norwich, stories about combat

and

survival, and he dreamed. He sent away for mail-order books and

himself expert in counter-terrorism, low-intensity

reckoned

warfare,

and the world of the military; he should have been listened to in

the

pub. His father was gone, living the last four years with some tart in

Ipswich, and he was the breadwinner for the family. He had his tea 354

when he wanted it. Home revolved around him, and his earning power.

He

believed, as the wage-earner, that he was the equal of any man he

met

in the pub. But he never found, quite, the popularity he thought

he

deserved. His life, with the other workers in the pig-fields, with the

people in the cul-de-sac where he lived, or in the pub where he propped up the bar each evening, was a constant search for that elusive

popularity. Stories never heard through to the end, jokes never

quite

laughed at, his opinion rarely asked... He was big, well muscled,

could

throw around the straw bales on which the pigs slept with ease, and because of his size he had never known fear.

He had not told her that the option was withdrawn, no longer existed.

Perry said it again in her ear as he held her.

"It cannot happen again."

"Because if anything else happened..."

"It won't, it can't."

"Anything... Gussie was the loudest. Gussie was the one drinking fastest, talking the biggest talk.

of strong beer were passed across the bar by

More pints

Martindale. Two hours they'd been going, and the talk was in the

drink. His wife, the timid Dorothy Martindale, had called him back from the bar, into the doorway. Why did he allow the swearing,

cursing, drink-talk? Because without these people they'd be at the wall, tramping to the bankruptcy hearing, that was why. She'd gone back upstairs to the flat over the bar.

The till rang again. They were the only customers he'd have in that night: everyone else was in the hall.

aid, "What I'm reckoning, if the bastard's still here when

Vince s

summer comes, the season starts, we can kiss goodbye to visitors."

Gussie capped him.

355

visitors. No money. Need the visitors."

"No bloody

id, "Something's got to be done, some bugger's got to have

Donna sa

e

th

balls to do something."

It was all the custom he had, and all he was likely to have if the stayed away because armed police were combing the village.

visitors

Who'd let kids run round? Who'd sit on the green with a picnic or go

walking on the beach? Most important, who'd sit on the bench outside a warm pint and crisps for the kids? Who'd be there

the pub with

if

e, when the season came, was a gun camp?

the villag

He'd be finished

if

ere were no visitors, and the others with him.

th

ssie shouted, "They got to know they're not wanted, got to know Gu

it

ght and they're going to."

strai

ted a plate of chips.

Vince wan

Martindale left the bar and went upstairs to ask his wife to make

a

plate of chips. He could charge a pound for a plate of chips. He apologized to her, but they needed each pound going into the till.

He'd

told her, when they'd started in the pub, that it would be a money nd now he was grateful for the money earned by a plate of

trail, a

chips. He went back down to the bar and Gussie wasn't there. He

thought Gussie had gone to piss, and his glass, half full, was on

the

bar counter. He seemed not to hear the complaining whine across the bar. The bank's letter was in his mind, and the letter from the

that stated he was under-performing.

brewery

Martindale saw Gussie through the front window, crossing the car-park and weaving. He was carrying a light plank, one of those the builders had left when he'd said he couldn't afford for them to complete the work on the outside lavatories. Martindale watched him lurching