Read A Line in the Sand Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
, 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