War Baby (31 page)

The
China Sea
rolled as another deep swell passed under the hull. They were two miles from shore in Gardiners Bay, two lines drifting from the stem. Webb emerged from below and threw a can of Budweiser at Ryan. Then he opened a beer for himself and sat down behind the wheel in the cabin.

There were just the two of them. Mickey had decided to stay behind at the cottage with Jenny. ‘You two go bond,’ she had said.

‘Nice boat, mate,’ Ryan said.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve done all right. Really dug in, aren’t you?’

‘I guess.’

A gust of wind shook the boat and whipped the pennants on the flying bridge. ‘Don’t you ever miss it, but?’

‘Miss what?’

‘The front line.’

‘Why the hell would I miss that?’

‘You did well enough out of it. It was worth a few books.’

Webb watched the horizon. An ink-black border of cloud was climbing the sky. They would have to head back to Lincoln Cove soon and beat the weather. ‘Remember Odile? And the little girl?’

‘Christ, Spider, not that again!’

‘I just wonder if you ever stop and wonder what happened to them.’

‘I know what happened to them. You always bring this up.’

‘Let’s get the lines in,’ Webb said.

‘I can’t change the past.’

‘You piss me off, Sean. You go out there with food parcels and steal medicines for the kids from the PX but when you had a chance to do something for someone you actually knew, for someone who loved you, you ran a mile. Everything you do is just for show until it counts for something.’

‘I know what I am. I don’t need you to remind me. Christ, you haven’t changed a bit, have you?’

‘Nobody changes, they just get older.’ Webb finished his beer, crushed the can in his fist and threw it on the deck. He went to the stern and started reeling in the lines.

Ryan brooded, sitting on the gunwale. A gust from the north shook the boat. ‘You’ll go back, mate. One day someone will ask you if you want to do a job in Afghanistan or the Balkans or somewhere and you’ll go back.’

‘Not me.’

‘Yeah, you will.’

Webb laid the rods in the fiberglass compartment below the gunwales. ‘Don’t you ever think about taking it all, Sean? Three score years and ten they promise us in the Bible. Maybe that’s better than a bullet in your head in some godforsaken little country while you’re still only halfway through.’

The wind whipped Ryan’s hair. ‘When I was twelve I had a fight with this red-haired kid in my class. Delaney, his name was. His old man was the publican at the hotel. I beat the living shit out of him. This was a Friday afternoon. Well, Friday night some of my mates came round and told me Delaney’s big brother was looking for me. This kid was sixteen and built like a brick shithouse. Well, at first I thought, okay, I’ll pretend to be sick. Take a few days off school. Or maybe if I get to school late and run home early I can avoid him. But then I thought, what’s the point? He’s going to find me sooner or later. So instead of hiding I went round the pub first thing on the Saturday morning and fronted him. I remember he was round the back carting beer kegs, and his sleeves were rolled up past his elbow and he had muscles like bags of potatoes. I knew I never had a chance. But the hiding he gave me wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I won his respect, I suppose. And you know something else? I nearly beat the big bastard. That’s how it is with me and dying, Spider. I’ll front him on his own turf so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life worrying about it.’

There were whitecaps on the ocean now, long black clouds scudding towards them. ‘Then again, if you’d taken a few days off, Delaney’s brother might have forgotten all about you,’ Webb said, and he went up to the flying bridge and hit the motor to pull in the anchor.

* * *

‘So Sean’s your ex,’ Jenny said.

‘Yeah, hard to imagine, isn’t it?’

A flurry of rain spattered against the windows. A mist had drifted down the channel, obscuring the far side of the cove. Jenny pulled on a woolen jersey and jeans and now lay sprawled on the sofa, P. J. O’Rourke on her lap. Her face was framed by a long tapered finger held against her cheek; the other hand held a glass of white wine.

Mickey curled on a lounge chair, her feet tucked underneath her

‘What a cozy weekend,’ Jenny said. A beat, then: ‘Uncle likes you very much.’

‘Does he?’

‘He talks about you all the time.’

‘I like him too.’ The silence hung, so she added: ‘There haven’t been many men in my life recently. I gave them a few years ago.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Divorce is pretty tough on your confidence. I came away feeling like a failure, even though I blamed Sean for everything. And then after a while I started to wonder if the penis, and its ancillary attachment, wasn’t a little overrated.’

‘I can’t comment. The jury’s still out on that one for me.’

‘I think your dad just dragged the decision back to the appeals court for me, too. I’m listening to arguments.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘When I was a nurse at Bien Hoa in 1970. He’d just jumped out of a burning helicopter.’

‘I hate to use the word, but it sounds romantic.’

‘Oh, Bien Hoa wasn’t romantic. Nothing in Vietnam was romantic. Was it?’

Jenny stared into her wine glass. ‘It’s a long time to know someone and not do something about it.’

‘Well, we lost touch after I got back. He was still there, no plans to come home and I was ... here. And besides I was a little … messed up.’

‘How were you messed up?’

‘I lost my faith.’

‘Your religion?’

She shook her head. ‘I lost my faith in life, and in some sort of kind, beneficent God. I couldn’t carry on a normal life anymore. Everything seemed just, I don’t know, meaningless.’

‘Did you try and kill yourself?’

Mickey felt her guard come up again. ‘That’s a hell of a question.’

‘It seems logical.’

‘Well, Dr Spock, we Vulcans are a little more tenacious than that. I did alcoholism and promiscuity instead. It’s the same thing only it a little more fun. For about five minutes.’

‘And you got better?’

‘Yeah, I got better. But I still miss the old me sometimes. You can get back a lot of things but never your innocence.’

‘Don’t be angry,’ Jenny said. ‘I really admire you. You must be very strong inside.’

‘I’m not angry. I’m just being open, okay?’ But she was angry. She felt as if she was being interrogated.

‘I was going to kill myself once,’ Jenny said.

Ah, so she wasn’t expecting that. It completely disarmed her. What was she supposed to say to that?

‘It was the first year I was here. I thought I would just go down to the rocks there and into the water. And just keep walking.’

‘What stopped you?’

Jenny seemed to shiver. ‘My mother told me not to.’

‘Your . .. mother?’

‘In those days I heard her talking to me all the time. Like a voice in my head. I guess I was a little crazy.’

‘No,’ Mickey said, ‘I was the same, I heard voices all the time too. Only my head was like a bar room, loads of people all shouting for another drink.’ Mickey reached out her hand. ‘Did you ever talk to Hugh about this?’

‘Uncle would not understand.’

‘He might.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter now. I obeyed my mother’s voice so now I guess everything is okay.’ She ran her fingers through her long black hair and pushed it back over her shoulder. ‘I must have come through it for a reason. I don’t think anyone survives just by luck.’

They heard the jeep pull into the drive. Webb and Ryan got out and ran up the path. They got soaked through in the downpour, but Ryan was laughing about it.

I have to tell her, he thought, I have to tell her about Ryan. I don’t know if it’s true, and I don’t know if it’s going to make any difference, but I have to tell her what I think. It had been weighing on him all weekend, seeing them together on the deck. Watching Ryan flirting with her had made him feel physically sick. He could not let it go on.

What would he say when she asked him why he hadn’t told her before? How could he explain and excuse that?

* * *

He had not expected her to stick around on the Sunday evening after Ryan and Mickey had left. He gave them a ride down to the train station, and when he got back to the cottage she was still there, in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She was chopping shallots, with rapid, expert movements of the knife. Something was wrong. Whenever she needed to talk she always went into the kitchen, started preparing food. It was her natural adjunct to important conversation.

‘Don’t you have to be at work tomorrow?’

‘I’ve got the day off.’ She separated some cloves of garlic and mashed them with the blade of the knife. ‘Fun weekend?’

‘It was different.’

‘I like Mickey. She’s okay.’ She spilled one of the cloves on the floor. She looked nervous.

‘What did you think of Sean?’

‘It’s all right. I saw how he was looking at me. Don’t worry. He’s old enough to be my father.’

‘There’s something I have to talk to you about,’ he said.

She dropped the knife on the counter top. ‘No, me first. You probably want to know why I’ve got the day off tomorrow.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got every day off.’

‘You lost your job?’

‘I quit.’

‘Quit? Why?’

‘Because I’m sick of writing up court reports and traffic accidents. I want to do proper journalism.’

‘The New York Times is one of the country’s - the world’s - leading newspapers. There’s kids would give their right arm to get a break there. You’re only twenty years old, for God’s sake! It’s called a cadetship. Give it time.’

‘What were you doing when you were twenty?’

‘I was working on a provincial newspaper in Surrey.’

‘While you figured out some way to get to Vietnam! If you want to get out of the herd you don’t follow the rest. You taught me that!’

‘I meant when you were grown up.’

‘I am grown up.’

‘No you’re not!’

‘I’m going to freelance.’

‘At your age that means you’re going to starve.’

‘You didn’t starve!’

‘Things were a lot different then.’

‘Well, where I’m going, everyone starves, so it’s not going to make any difference.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Yugoslavia.’

He felt as if his heart had stopped. ‘You’re not fucking serious.’

He had never sworn in front of her before. It was like he’d dropped a glass on the floor. Finally she said: ‘It’s my Vietnam.’

‘No!’ he shouted at her, and slammed his fist on the bench top. She didn’t even flinch. He searched desperately for some strategy to talk her out of this. ‘I want you to stop and think about this.’

‘I’ve made up my mind.’

‘Have you? Maybe you don’t realize this, but war zones cost money.’

‘I know. Ryan told me how expensive it is to survive.’

‘You told a total stranger about this before you told me?’

‘I didn’t tell him I was going myself. I just asked him about it.’

‘And what else did Mister Wisenuts tell you?’

‘He told me to you needed a camera, like you did. That you had more chance of selling stories as a freelancer if you could provide pictures as well.’

‘Did he also tell you that this little difference of opinion they’re having over there is one of the most dangerous wars journalists have ever worked in, that attrition rates among the correspondents are higher than they were even in Vietnam?’

‘I’m prepared to take the risk.’

His heart felt like lead. Yes, he could see that. You gave her a chance at a better life, he thought, but what she wants is what you had. ‘You spend one night dressed up as a bag lady and suddenly you think you’re John Pilger?’

‘You did it.’

‘That was different.’

‘How?’

He didn’t know how to answer her. Yes, how? He had stumbled onto the right contacts, he had got lucky, and he had survived. He had lived off that one risk for the rest of his life, just as she intended to do.

‘Money.’

‘What?’

‘That’s how it’s different. Money. In Vietnam the Americans provided the transport. These days you can’t hitch a ride to the front line anymore or rent rooms for ten dollars a month. You’ll find yourself throwing your credit card on Hertz counters and at hotel clerks and every month your bank statement will come in and all you’ll have is forty bucks some agency gave you for a picture of a burning tank. And that will not cover a night at the Sheraton.’

She stared back at him, unmoved. ‘I’ve given notice on my apartment. I’ve saved a bit of money over the last twelve months and I’ve got the car to sell.’

‘You’ve been thinking about this for a while.’

‘Yes, I have.’

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t suspected anything.

‘The features editor was real nice to me. He gave me a letter saying they’ll consider anything I send them and I have a friend who works at Rolling Stone and he wrangled another letter from them. I’ll fly to Zagreb and get accredited with UNPROFOR. The rest is up to me.’

Christ, she had it all worked out. ‘It’s a hundred dollars a night at the Intercon in Zagreb. Then you have to hire an interpreter.’

‘I’ll have two thousand bucks after the plane ticket. I guess I’ll just have to start earning right off.’

‘You mean taking stupid risks as soon as you get off the plane.’

He went to the window. The storm had passed and a few stars had appeared between the inky black clouds.

‘I thought... I hoped you’d be supportive.’

‘Supportive? I hate that word. I’m not your uncle, for God’s sake. You can call me that, but fact is, for the last eight years I’ve been your father. I love you like a father. If you go and do this insane thing I will die a thousand times a day.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He couldn’t stop her. She was, after all, one of the great survivors. This was a girl who had once taught herself to catch and eat seagulls to stay alive. She very possibly had more of the resources required to be a good combat photographer and journalist than he had ever had.