Alice got her photos back from the developers, started sorting through them in the living room: pulling out the best ones to show her grandad on Sunday, laying out the panoramas on the coffee table to see if they worked.
– More or less. What do you think?
Martha was in and out of the room: in her pyjamas, but tidying the flat instead of going to bed. She nodded approval in passing, carrying empty mugs and glasses out into the kitchen. Keith was sitting in the chair next to Alice, tackling his accounts, long overdue, piles of receipts sliding off his knees, more spilling out of a bag at his feet. Glad of a distraction, he picked up the second pack of photos from the table and laughed about the weather.
– Looks like you had about half an hour of sunshine the whole time you were away.
– It wasn’t that bad.
– No, but this is.
He held up one to show her: Alice grimacing on a beach, nose running, eyes teary in the wind. She laughed.
– It’s for the bin.
– Show me.
Martha had come through from the kitchen again. She leaned over the back of Keith’s chair, smiling as he flicked through the pictures.
– Joseph cuts a fine figure in a cagoule anyway.
– And I don’t?
– You lack the military training. Takes years of practice to carry that look off.
Martha winked at Alice and then started gathering the papers Keith had strewn across the floor. He’d got to the beginning of the photos again, and put them back down on the table.
– I didn’t know Joseph was in the army.
Martha interrupted his flow, holding out an invoice he had discarded, waiting. Keith took it from her, impassive, and then put it back on the floor after she’d turned away. Alice smiled at him, and he went on:
– My brother was too, after he finished university. What was Joseph’s regiment?
– I don’t know, actually. It was quite a while ago. I think it was infantry.
– Proper soldiering, Neil would say. He went for infantry even though he’d studied engineering, came home and joined our local regiment. Got frustrated in the end, though. They never sent him anywhere that counted, not in his mind anyway.
Martha came back with two more crumpled sheets for Keith, but when he just added them to the pile by his chair, she gave up on the mess and sat down.
– He was always off somewhere, far as I could tell. Whizzing about in Chinooks. Belize. I remember him going there, because you had to check the map to see where it was.
She kicked her boyfriend’s feet and he smiled.
– Only because my Dad’s atlas was old, it still said British Honduras. That was just training anyway. Jungle warfare. I’ve got an action man for a brother. He was forever training and never doing, that was a big part of the problem, I reckon. A platoon from his regiment went to Bosnia, part of the UN mission. Neil decided to leave after that: said it was too hard, always watching his men go without him.
Keith blinked, thinking about his brother. Alice was sitting on the floor by the coffee table, her flatmates were on chairs, on either side, talking to her, but across her somehow, and she wasn’t sure how to join in. Martha said:
– Your mum was glad though, wasn’t she? About Bosnia. She always was, when he didn’t get to go somewhere. Used to call us to say how relieved she was, because she couldn’t say it to him.
Keith nodded.
– Yeah, I remember. But he’s the last of us kids, you know. By a few years. And the army takes you over, took him over, I don’t think my Mum could get used to that. Or she didn’t want to. Let go of her son to that extent.
He shifted, frowning a little.
– We went to school with army kids. I remember they looked out for each other, I liked that about them. The families moved a lot, so there were always new kids to look out for. I reckon it would have been easier if we’d been an army family, maybe, when Neil joined up. You might feel more part of it. You’d know what to expect, anyway. I mean, my Dad was in the army, but that was national service, like everyone back then, and it was before my Mum met him. He made army life sound tedious, if anything.
– Neil signed up for officer training, though. That was bound to be different.
– Yeah, but I think it surprised Mum that he wanted to do it. He didn’t have to.
– Baby son has a mind of his own, shock horror? Keith looked at his girlfriend, mild, amused.
– She worried about the guns and bombs, as you would. Didn’t like it that he was trained to use them on other people either. It just didn’t square with her idea of him. I was glad for my Mum when he gave in his notice. Got passed over for Major again. He told me they didn’t want you getting complacent. Expecting promotion without putting in the effort. I think it gutted him.
Keith shrugged, looked over at Alice.
– It’s a bizarre world, seen from the outside anyway. I’d be interested to hear what Joseph made of it. I’m sure Neil used to get off on the fact that we found it strange. Liked having to explain it to us. I still don’t get all the dressing up and shunting around parade grounds in unison.
Alice smiled, because Keith was smiling at her.
– It used to scare me, actually, listening to him back then. He used to say he wanted to be tested. Validated. What a word.
Keith laughed, and then shook his head.
– Get it right and you get your troops out alive, get it wrong and they’re in bits or in boxes. Or they see you as a liability and shoot you in the back. This is my little brother talking.
Alice watched him, still shaking his head, caught somewhere between incredulity and sneaking respect.
– He’s a good, solid, diligent bloke, Neil. Lovely, to my mind. But he wanted to be something else, and they wouldn’t let him, poor sod. He volunteered for every posting going, and then spent most of his time shuffling numbers around on spreadsheets and dealing with troublesome soldiers. Teenagers, most of them. Neil was like a cross between an accountant and a social worker. One of his boys was always getting caught half-cut in town, or driving while banned. He said you could take them to the most extraordinary, far-flung spot in the world, but all they cared about was whether they’d get lager there and porn on cable.
Alice turned back to the photos, started sorting through them again. She wasn’t particularly enjoying the conversation. Keith was quiet for a minute or two, but she could feel him watching her, wanting her to look up again.
– Joseph was a squaddie, wasn’t he?
– I’m sorry.
Keith was embarrassed. Alice blinked at him.
– Don’t be. No need. Wasn’t you that said it anyway.
– I know. I mean. I don’t know.
He was smiling about himself now, back-pedalling and failing, and the unnecessary apology left Alice irritated. She looked through the last of the photos, mostly pictures Joseph had taken, and mostly better than her own. Lichen on stone walls, thick twists of seaweed, careful about detail and framing: Alice started a small pile to show him. Martha got up to go to bed and then she was alone with Keith.
He didn’t try to pick up talking again, and she was glad, because the conversation had unsettled her. Not the thought of Joseph drunk and watching porn in exotic locations, it was the idea of Keith’s family adjusting that got to her: puzzling over the strange world inhabited by one of their own. When Joseph told her he’d been in the army, she’d made the same distinction as Keith’s mother, between doing national service and joining up voluntarily. That was in those early weeks when it felt like the more she found out, the more she liked him. Alice couldn’t get the army to fit with Joseph somehow, and it had made her curious.
July weekend, sitting in his kitchen, Sunday papers spread across the table, Drumcree and decommissioning were both on the inside pages. Fewer marchers that year, but still plenty of police there and plenty of tension. Alice had watched Joseph skimming the headlines: he’d already lifted the page to turn it, but it was as though he couldn’t let go of it, his eyes intent, settling on an article.
– Were you out there, then?
Joseph looked up briefly, then back down at the paper. Pictures of banners and sashes, bowler hats.
– Yeah. For a bit.
He turned the page, but found more of the same, and
Alice persisted.
– What were you reading just then?
– About the IRA. The Garda know where they have most of their arms dumps now.
– Will they ever open them, do you think?
– I could tell you what the article said, if you want.
He didn’t sound defensive, looking at her across the table, eyes clear and friendly enough, but the answer hadn’t come immediately. Difficult to say if she was being told to drop it. Joseph was watching her, as though waiting for her to respond, but he wasn’t exactly opening up the conversation: if you want. He flicked through to the back pages.
– The little bit I know is years old anyway.
– You’ll still know more than me, though.
Joseph shrugged and Alice couldn’t tell if he was irritated or what.
– Sorry. Do you get it a lot? People asking you about it?
Joseph closed the newspaper, slid it away from himself across the table, and Alice thought he wasn’t angry, but he was uneasy with the conversation, resisting, and it was strange to feel like she was pushing him, when she’d hardly asked him anything.
– It’s just the obvious, isn’t it? Ireland. If you’ve been in the army, people think you must have been there, one tour at least.
– Have you had people get angry with you?
– Sometimes. It’s not that, though.
He shrugged.
– It’s fair enough to ask, I reckon. Especially when something big hits the papers. Good Friday, Omagh, Bloody Sunday inquiry. You get so you expect it, but it doesn’t mean I’ve got anything worth offering. Nothing you haven’t heard before, just more information.
Joseph sat for a while, as though trying to decide whether to continue. She wanted him to go on and couldn’t quite believe he would try to leave it at that, when they’d only just started talking. The window was open and Alice could hear kids, kicking a ball around outside, small voices shouting below them in the courtyard. She looked at Joseph across the table and thought he wasn’t enjoying this at all, so she was surprised when he relented: told her he was working in Portugal when the Docklands bomb happened. Sitting in a bar that had English telly when he heard.
– Might even have been an Irish pub, but that’s probably just memory laying it on.
He told her it was the day after, Saturday lunchtime, and most people in there were from home, a lot from London, so the place went quiet after the news came on.
– Windows shattered, office blinds flapping, sheets of paper flying all over the road. You’ll remember what it was like. No one could believe it. IRA ceasefire over anyway, no doubt about that.
A few men in the pub knew him, and that he’d been in the army, and word got round the room fast. Joseph said he could feel them looking at him, expecting, kept his eyes on the screen. Remembered thinking he could say the IRA are animals. Or arseholes for breaking their word.
– Something easy like that, because then at least you’ve said something.
But Joseph said it wouldn’t come out, and he told Alice it wouldn’t have been good enough anyway, not for that crowd. Frank from Glasgow shouted from down the bar: said Joseph was only keeping his mouth shut because he knew putting soldiers over there made everything worse.
– A wind-up, could have been.
Meant to annoy him into talking, probably, but it didn’t work.
– Everyone’s a bit hyper, because of the news, and they all want you to kick something off, you know what they’re thinking: he was over there, so he can’t have nothing to say, can he? They’re waiting, and you know you’re making it worse for yourself, but there’s still nothing coming.
The news went on, reporters, police and politicians, and Joseph said he tried but he couldn’t find any words or thoughts that made any sense of what they were watching.
– I felt like a wanker. But why say something? For the sake of it? Enough of that goes on already.
Joseph told her Frank had started off an argument down his end of the bar by this time. One man said he agreed with the IRA’s aims but not their methods, and got shouted down. He tried to keep talking through the beer mats aimed at him, and the noise went on like that for a good while longer, until someone else cut in, said he didn’t know what all the bawling was about:
– Only two dead and one was a Paki, so he doesn’t count.
Alice remembered how she had to sit back in her chair when he told her that part, and how Joseph smiled. As though he knew that would get a reaction from her.
– Just another wind-up, probably, but then who could tell?
– In very poor taste anyway.
Joseph nodded, said maybe so, but he’d been grateful for it at the time.
– It got a big enough laugh, and then nobody was too bothered any more, whose side anyone was on, or what I thought about Ireland.
Keith was sorting his receipts again when Alice started packing up her photos. He looked up and nodded to her, affable, his bungled apology and the cause of it already forgotten. Alice had wanted to join in the conversation earlier, but couldn’t, and she’d found the whole thing embarrassing. Keith putting his foot in at the end had been the least of it: far worse was sitting there hoping they wouldn’t ask her too many questions. How Joseph had come to join the army, what it had been like for him or why he’d left. All those things that Keith knew about his brother, and she’d expected to hear about Joseph too. If not in those early weeks with him, then at some stage at least.
Alice had told her grandfather that Joseph used to be in the services: she’d thought it might help him accept Joseph’s offer to redecorate the house. But she hadn’t told her mum and Alan yet, and she knew they might find the idea difficult. Alice had driven past Catterick Garrison with them, two weeks ago in Yorkshire, on their way out to the Dales. They’d made their usual comments about the MOD holding acres of prime walking land hostage: it was a family lament, but Alice had kept quiet. Joseph might agree with her mum and Alan, for all she knew. She had no idea. If she said he’d been in the army, they’d want to hear more about it. Bound to find it strange if she couldn’t tell them, too many gaps she couldn’t fill in for them.
Alice put the photos for Joseph in an envelope, ready to give him when he came round tomorrow. A day off to spend together, and she was looking forward to it, but she couldn’t help thinking the Paki joke had worked for Joseph a second time around too, because she still didn’t know anything really, other than that he’d been in Ireland. She could remember feeling he’d explained something at the time, but she wasn’t so sure now. Looking back, it seemed more like don’t-ask-me dressed up as a story. Alice didn’t like to think about it that way because it was just too cynical: and then at least you’ve said something. A careful way of not revealing anything. Maybe this made her like the staring men in the bar, but Alice couldn’t believe Joseph had nothing worth hearing.
It was over two weeks before Joseph went back to David’s. He had three days clear to do the hallway and they arranged it all without speaking to each other directly. Joseph didn’t plan it that way, but the old man was out both times he tried phoning, so Alice passed on his dates when she visited, and then Joseph was over at Eve’s Sunday dinnertime when David called to confirm. He came home to a short message on his answerphone, which he listened to twice before deleting.
– Sixteenth and seventeenth I’ll be out most of the day. Eighteenth I’d be happy to provide you with lunch.
He didn’t see David at all the first two days. Let himself in and worked steadily, damp curls of wallpaper lifted by the scraper, layers falling away to reveal the grey-pink of the plaster: bare walls for David to find when he got home. Joseph got the papering table out on the second day, relieved to be covering them up again, getting the job over and done. Autumn now, and the sun was lower in the sky, moving around the house more than over, the way it had when Joseph was working here in the summer. Threw longer shadows in the front garden in the afternoon, and he worked with one eye on them, thinking time was getting on and he should get going. Joseph packed up quickly, locking everything back into the garage, untidy, and he felt like a coward, but he didn’t want to see the old man. He left a note for David on the kitchen table, said his brother-in-law would be coming tomorrow, late morning, to help him hang the paper on the long wall from the landing to the downstairs hall. Not to worry about lunch: they’d sort themselves out with something from the high street, thanks all the same.
David was there in the morning, and Joseph couldn’t decide if he was put out. Pruning the roses by the front path, he raised his secateurs and nodded while Joseph parked up, but the old man didn’t show any sign of coming into the house when Joseph got to the door. Just gone eight, and it was a clear morning, but the front of the house was still in shadow, dull blue and cold with it. Joseph pulled up his shoulders.
– Thought I’d make it an early start. Booked up into November, so I’ll need to get it all finished today.
– Right you are.
Friendly enough. Joseph let himself in and thought this was maybe just normal David behaviour: Alice always said her grandad was hard to call. The old man brought a mug of tea through to him after an hour or so, and made a bit of small talk about the state of the skirting boards, a bit scuffed and bashed near the front door. Joseph said it would be easy enough to do that one section and David listened, polite but not like it mattered that much to him, one way or the other. He kept on like that, cool and cheery, even after Arthur pitched up with Ben, which hadn’t been part of the plan.
– You don’t mind the nipper do you, Mr Bell? My girlfriend, Joey’s sister, she’s working today and I forgot.
Arthur stood in the porch, apologetic, tapping his big forehead with his knuckles. The old man had opened the door and Joseph was standing behind him in the hallway, so he couldn’t see David’s expression, just the hand he offered:
– No, indeed no. Thank you for coming.
Arthur hadn’t been keen on the idea: he didn’t get that many days off at the moment. Said he’d only papered his mum’s spare room before, and the corners didn’t bear looking at, but Joseph persuaded him. He’d be buying pints for a while after this, especially now he’d landed Arthur in trouble with Eve, but it still felt worth it: less chance of the old man talking with someone else around.
Ben shoved his little trucks up and down the hall and Arthur leant back against the banisters, listening while Joseph talked it through. He’d done up to the dado rail upstairs and down, so they just needed to paper above it now: start on the landing and work their way down to the hall. David watched them from the front door, keys and shopping bag in hand, waited until Joseph had finished and then said:
– I’ll be back early afternoon.
There wasn’t much morning left, but they set themselves up on the landing anyway. Ben got hungry and narky before they could get going properly with the papering, and he shouted when neither of them would listen to him, too busy pushing the paper up and down the wall, matching the pattern, to notice his upraised arms.
Joseph lifted him up onto his shoulders for the walk down the road to the chippy. Ben chatted and swayed while his uncle kept a firm grip on his calves: easy to make him happy. Joseph felt himself smiling too, properly, relaxing. Glad to have an uncomplicated conversation with Arthur in a café, away from the house for an hour or so. They made their way back along the suburban pavements. The town hall clock struck the halfhour and Ben was falling asleep, his mouth open, arms draped over his father’s shoulders. Joseph took Arthur’s car keys from him, got a blanket and the baby monitor out of the boot. They laid Ben down in the front room on the sofa, moved quietly up the stairs to carry on working.
David came home shortly after three, but he didn’t call up to them. They heard his movements downstairs, amplified crackles on the baby monitor. He was in the kitchen first, unpacking the shopping, and Joseph, listening, heard packets and tins put into cupboards, feet walking into the living room, a chair pulled back from the dining table, and then newspaper pages unfolding and turning. A little later there was a young boy’s cough and Arthur put his paste brush down mid-stroke, headed for the stairs.
– Hang on.
Joseph whispered, he held his hand up and Arthur stopped and listened with him. On the monitor, they heard Ben shifting on the sofa cushions, coughing again, and then David’s voice, soft, in the background.
– Hello fella. Didn’t see you there.
Joseph and Arthur ducked their heads in smiles, almost giggles, although it wasn’t entirely clear what was funny. Listening to someone who doesn’t know it, maybe. They held their breath, hands over their mouths. Ben’s breathing was loud but steady, still sleepy, and he didn’t seem upset by the strange room and the stranger speaking to him:
– Can I get you something? Something to drink or a biscuit perhaps?
– Biscuit.
Arthur rolled his eyes, mouthing please and heading downstairs.
– Righto.
The paste was drying on the sheet in front of him, but Joseph listened instead of working. To David rummaging for biscuits in the kitchen and Arthur’s apologies.
– It’s not a problem.
– Dad, the man said I could have one.
– I know, and that’s very nice, but just one now, alright?
Joseph imagined the old man awkward, standing between them, and his mind’s-eye picture embarrassed him. He folded up the sheet of wallpaper, dumped it, wasted, laid out another, started working again. The baby monitor went off and Arthur came upstairs with Ben and a tray: tea and biscuits from David for all of them. The boy was happy on the floor with his digger and chocolate digestives, while Arthur and Joseph worked their way down the stairs and along the hallway. They finished the papering with time to spare for tidying and sorting. Moving David’s things from the garage back into the shed again, and Joseph’s into his van. They didn’t talk much, just had Ben nattering and bashing in the background. Arthur sang a bit under his breath while he worked, and Joseph was very aware in those afternoon hours of David alone in the next room.
– How come you joined up? I’ve been wondering about it.
Joseph was driving them back to his place: early evening, and the roads were crawling with midweek traffic. It was a few days after he’d finished at her grandad’s and they’d both knocked off early, met up at Stan and Clare’s. Ended up spending a couple of hours in their kitchen, because Stan wanted to get some work done on his own house over the winter, and he asked Joseph to give him a price for the plastering and painting. The traffic was stop-start by the time they got going, took half an age just to get as far as the common, and Alice was quiet for most of it, before she brought up the army.
– How old were you? You’ve never said.
Joseph shrugged. They were stuck now, still a good ten minutes from home, longer at this rate. He said:
– Old enough to know better.
Townsend was sixteen when he signed up. That’s my excuse.
No end to the cars ahead of them, so he turned off early. More traffic on the side streets, they were stopped again, and Alice was watching him.
– Infantry Command Respect.
Joseph saluted, making fun of his younger self and the recruitment slogans, and he told Alice he remembered the posters from the pinboards at school, in the corridor outside the metalwork room.
– They put them up on all the bus stops too, on our estate. Around exam time usually, that’s when they get their best recruits.
Alice smiled at his joke, but she was still waiting. The road was clearer again after the next junction and Joseph cut through the back streets, waiting to see if Alice would ask another question, but she didn’t, she just let it go.
He hadn’t been straight with her and she knew it. It bothered Joseph, and he kept thinking what he could have told her. It was true enough about the posters, but he’d laughed about them back then too, even when he was at school, how they always got covered in biro dicks and specs and had to be taken down. It was the same a year or two later with all the videos and leaflets the recruitment officer gave him: couldn’t take any of that stuff too seriously, actors running about looking hard in cammo, loud music and speedboats. Never expected that from the army, he was never that stupid, and Joseph didn’t feel right, fobbing Alice off with a story like that. She wanted to know and it was hard not to tell her something that counted.
Couldn’t wait to leave school, he remembered telling his teacher, after he let off the fire extinguishers in the science block for a dare. She sat across the desk from him, shocked and frowning, and it was like she couldn’t bring herself to believe it was him that did it, because he was quiet enough in class and never caused her trouble as a rule. Pissed him off, the way she looked at him, all let down: like he’d ever promised her anything. So Joseph swore at her, for good measure, and said he just wanted shot of the place, and all of them in it: get earning, get on with living. But then the novelty of that wore off quick enough. He liked his job alright, and his boss was a nice bloke, but it felt like pond life sometimes, stagnating. Work, pub, snooker club, all the usual streets and houses. A small life and he’d spent all of his in the same place, with the same people. Seemed like the most you could expect was the odd shag or a fruit machine that coughed up more than you fed it.
Lee said he’d joined up to get himself sorted. Jarvis reckoned the army had done everyone a favour:
– Bring us your great unwashed and sick in the head. Give us your borstal graduates, we take any old scum. Can’t make men of them all, we’re not miracle workers, but at least you know they’ve got an outlet.
But Lee’s record started when he was thirteen and Joseph knew his didn’t compare. Small-time thieving for cheap thrills and pin money.
– A good laugh, was it? Or couldn’t you think of nothing better to do?
It hadn’t impressed his dad. He knew the others who got collared with him too.
– What you doing with idiots like that anyway?
Gave him the third degree when he got back from the station, had refused to pick him up when he’d phoned.
– You’re seventeen, Joey. Old enough to catch a bus on your own.
Took him out for a drink later, though. And a long talking-to. About how much he had going for him and why he shouldn’t just chuck it all by acting stupid.
– I know it gets a bit boring now and again, but that’s not so bad, is it? Not the worst thing that could happen to you, son.
Just a bit of half-arsed rebellion, too shameful to admit to, and Joseph knew it didn’t add up to a reason for joining up either. Not enough of one to give Alice. His day in court never stopped him getting work. Plenty of jobs going round his way, maybe nothing too exciting, but plenty of other things he could have done instead of becoming a soldier. Joseph didn’t know how to explain it to her. Signing up was just one of those things people talked about doing. Like living abroad or winning the lottery. Mates of his from school and work, late at night when they’d had a skinful, smoking too much and waxing lyrical.
– It’ll get me out of this dump anyway.
– Army’s for sad cases.
– Just because you couldn’t handle it.
– Wankers is right. No birds. No decent ones anyway.
– Comfy shoe brigade.
– Get fit, get paid for it.
– Not enough.
– Not enough for taking a bullet.
– Better than hanging about with you cunts.
– Go on. Piss off then.
It was easy in the end. Couldn’t believe he hadn’t done it earlier. The recruiting office was on the high street and he just went down there one afternoon after he finished work. His dad read over all the papers with him, said he should take his time, that it was a big decision, but it didn’t feel that way to Joseph: just the best he’d felt in ages. When he got his dates for basic training, it was like his whole life had got easier. Still getting up, going to work and coming home again. Still the same old same old but it didn’t bother him. And it was like that again when he found out they’d been posted to Ireland. It was knowing he was going. That feeling: like something real was going to happen.
Joseph thought about telling Alice he’d hated it, because he had sometimes, especially out in Ireland. It got to all of them, the stress and the boredom, worst combination: led to poor concentration, zero motivation. Add the rain and cold, and days like that Joseph would be counting, counting, from the minute they started, clocking off time. Feeling everything slipping, seconds going by too slow and all gone slack inside. Uniform walking empty. No will, no muscle to put into the task at hand. Just wanting to get this patrol over and be back in his bunk. Still functioning, but brain and body shunted over to minimum.
Turned the volume on his radio down once. Stupid thing to do, fucking dangerous for everyone, but he just couldn’t be arsed with the patrol that morning and all the orders. Slung his rifle and walked out across the stubble and on through a hedge, even after he’d heard the command to wait shouted behind him.
– What the bloody hell were you doing?
He was spoken to after by the Second Lieutenant heading up the multiple. Just out of Sandhurst and younger than Joseph: they’d all been giving him a hard time ever since he came. Joseph got the CO’s face shoved up to his after they got back to the barracks too, and then a man-to-man attempt from the Lieutenant later on in the evening: he came and found Joseph having a cigarette out behind the cookhouse.
– I’m not getting one hundred per cent from you, am I?
He’d made a point of telling them he’d been to a comprehensive. Didn’t sound like it, and Townsend had told him it couldn’t have been nearly as comprehensive as his school was. Sir.
– Are you listening to me, Mason?
– Sir.
– Left us all open, your little display. Anyone watching would have been laughing.
– Sir.
Joseph knew what he meant: had wondered what the patrol looked like already, seen through a rifle sight.
– Very disappointing because I’ve read your file, so I know you to be a capable soldier.
The whole company had privileges withdrawn because of Joseph’s fuck-up. The bar was locked and everyone was calling him a stupid cunt, so he’d come outside because he felt like one too. The rain had stopped, but Joseph could still hear it singing in the guttering: one ear on that, the other on the army psychology: praising and scolding. Disappointing. Just like being at school again. Except he was a grown man and getting ticked off made it hard to see the point in staying.
But Joseph couldn’t tell Alice all that, just like he couldn’t tell her he’d had no good reason for joining: it all sounded too much like he was making excuses. Big mistake, not my fault, too young, I never wanted to be there in the first place.
Plenty of times he’d wanted to chuck it, but he wouldn’t have stuck his three years if it was that bad, would he? Moaning came with the territory: always somebody talking about leaving, or slagging off the army. You could tell when Lee was losing it, because he’d start banging on about how the IRA had all the best suppliers: arms coming in on fishing boats from America and Gadaffi. He’d keep hauling out the same old chestnuts. Given the choice, would you have an Armalite or an SA80?
– The IRA buy quality and we get this piss-poor excuse for a weapon.
Joseph wasn’t like Lee, never felt he had axes to be grinding. Not like Jarvis either, who said he slept and ate and shat the regiment. Jarvis didn’t mind them complaining, as long as they didn’t do it out on patrol. He said soldiers who moaned were better at doing what they were told:
– Give you an inch, I can get a mile out of you after, and you won’t really mind.
Most of the blokes he knew in the army were happy enough to be there, and Joseph thought he should count himself among them. A capable soldier. Even when he was piss-wet through and knackered. Out in the November wet and dark and feeling hungry; fields and roads coming up to the border; Townsend tapping on the passenger’s window; the man by the car was reaching again, so Joseph shouldered his rifle.
It was all part of the same thing, and he just couldn’t have Alice knowing. She was asking now and he knew it shouldn’t surprise him. Wanted to be straight with her, but he didn’t think he could be.
Joseph left early again, said he had a job on north of the river, and Alice lay in his bed for a long time after, until she was late for work and had no excuse to give them. I don’t know what’s going on with my boyfriend. She knew that wouldn’t really cut it. Clare would be on this morning, and Alice thought she might talk to her about Joseph at lunchtime, but couldn’t think what she would say: it wasn’t anything concrete. She thought of him in the car, avoiding her questions. Nothing hostile about him, but he was resisting, and it made her uneasy.
Soldiers and Northern Ireland. Alice kept trying to push them away, all those associations. Teenage boy shot in the back while he was driving away: not a terrorist, a joyrider, but they baked him a cake all the same, the soldier who did it, threw him a party back at the barracks to celebrate. Another four, another time, stabbed a man with a screwdriver, because it was the end of their tour and they were still alive and they wanted to do over a local before they went home. Disconnected incidents. Fragments, only half-remembered from the news, from years-old conversations in front of the radio and TV.
Alice was aware of getting ahead of herself, making too much of yesterday’s failed conversation: she had no idea why Joseph had been so cagey, might even have had his mind on other things entirely, he was working a lot just now, and tired with it. But then, that was just the problem with not knowing, wasn’t it? Left you too much space for speculation.
British forces, welcomed by Catholics when they first arrived, but quickly hated: dawn raids, bedrooms turned over, humiliation. Bessbrook was built by Quakers, but now the biggest army base in Ireland took up half the town. Alan must have told her that one, or her mum, it was the kind of detail they’d pick up on. Stephen Restorick was a name she remembered. Because he was the last British soldier to be killed there. Shot at long range while he was talking to a woman, a civilian. She was a Catholic and she stayed with him while he died, because his mum couldn’t be there.
What would Joseph say? That’s just the obvious? Alice could accept that much: maybe these bits and pieces did just reflect her ignorance. Or at least her choice of daily paper. But he was the best person to put that right for her, surely? He could tell her. What would he do if she pushed him, just kept on insisting? Even thinking about that was frightening: she’d gone too far before, and her dad had stopped writing. It was too easily done, that kind of damage, and too complete. But it didn’t have to be that way with Joseph, did it? The cup of tea he’d made for her skinned over on the box that served as a bedside table.
Joseph didn’t have much furniture, said he could never get round to it. His flat was mostly floorboards and crates, with a couple of nice things he’d picked up from skips and on jobs. He’d told Alice it drove his sister mad: he’d been there four years and she said it still looked like he was squatting. It wasn’t so important to Joseph, Alice knew that, and she liked the fact he didn’t care about owning much. A comfortable mattress, a few good albums on vinyl, but walking around his rooms that morning, she was tempted to agree with Eve: it did all seem very temporary. Irrational. You’ve got no reason to think he’ll be going, have you? Alice washed and dressed. She was alone in the flat and thought for a while she could go looking. No. Pathetic. Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to find it in his sock drawer or his kitchen cabinets.
Alice worked with a woman from Glasgow: Siona was a few years older, had lived all over, left home and Scotland when she was sixteen. She’d taught Alice ‘The Fields of Athenry’ at a hospital party once. Her dad was a Celtic supporter, her whole family, and he’d taken Siona to the football every weekend, even before she started school. Her mum drew the line at Old Firm games, but her brothers told her about them: Red Hand of Ulster on one set of terraces, tricolours and rebel songs on the other. Siona said she’d always known the words, and on which side she belonged. Told Alice about the Orange marches through the city centre too: could feel the drums in your belly, even when they were streets away. And about the blades that got pulled on the side roads after matches, away from the stadium and the mounted police, where the crowds got thinner. Best to stick with your own. Siona had been glad to get away from it: that mentality. Imagine being caught up in Belfast or Portadown, where that shite really matters.
On Sunday, Alice visited her grandfather as usual. Crossword and tea, and then she helped him do some autumn tidying in the back garden. Raked the leaves into black bags for rotting, stacked up twigs and dry stems ready for burning. When the light started to go, they retreated into his kitchen. Her grandad talked frosts and pests while the kettle was boiling: a nothing conversation that Alice joined in with, standing next to the radiator, but the cold of the day stayed in her face and fingers. This was nothing like the conversations they’d had in the summer: her grandfather was back to his old arm’s-length habits, and Alice didn’t like it.
He asked after Joseph, interested, the way he always did now, and it irritated her.
– He’s fine, working hard before things slow down over the winter.
Alice shrugged out the platitudes. Through the door, she could see the new wallpaper in the hallway, thought of all the hours and days Joseph had spent here. The job was finished, but he’d even talked about coming again, touching up the woodwork, which didn’t look to her like it needed doing.
It was cold outside and starting to spot when she left. Her grandfather waited in the porch while she unlocked her bike, and then he came to the gate as always, but she didn’t give him a kiss, just waved, backing away, saying she’d call and see him in a fortnight. Alice cycled to the station, angry with them both, her grandfather and Joseph, but she was also ashamed at her own behaviour. Sulking about the two men and the time they spent together. Neither of them was giving anything. She pushed hard against the pedals.
His dad’s birthday fell on a Saturday, and his mum was cooking lunch. She dropped hints on the phone about inviting Alice along, and Joseph was glad when he asked her, could see she was pleased.
– Who else will be there?
– Just Eve and Art. And Ben.
Alice was pulling on her waterproofs in his hallway, ready for a wet morning’s cycle to work.
– Yeah, alright then. Yeah.
She stopped to answer, smiling at him from behind her jacket collar, and Joseph thought the invitation could be a way of making up to her, maybe. For the way he’d been with her lately: on his guard, and he didn’t want to be. Picking up extra jobs, though he didn’t need the money at the moment, just kept saying yes to them, working all hours and he’d hardly seen her this past week or two. He kissed her before she went out the door.
Alice had met Eve and Arthur before, but only once and accidentally. She’d arrived at the flat as they were leaving one afternoon, and they’d all stood out on the walkway shaking hands and smiling, Ben hiding behind Eve’s legs and Alice crouching down to say hello and everyone laughing because he was so shy with her.
Joseph stood out there now, looking down at the courtyard. Watched Alice cycle through the puddles and out onto the road. She wasn’t stupid, wouldn’t stand this treatment long, he knew that, and it made him nervous. She was happy about meeting his parents, but she’d also want some proper answers to her questions.
Joseph’s mum had a new blouse on when they got there, a spot of lippy too, for Alice’s benefit probably. He smiled about it with his mum in the kitchen, getting cups of tea ready for everyone, and she swiped at his knees with a dishcloth for making fun, but she wasn’t angry.
– Go and sit down, smartarse, I’ll bring the tray in.
Ben was sticking close to Eve again, watching Alice the whole time, but not going near. Alice tried kneeling down by the tank engines on the rug for a while, but he wasn’t having any of it. She did better with Joseph’s mum, sitting next to her over lunch, talking to her about what she could do for her back, the nagging pains of twenty-odd years spent bending over people’s haircuts. Joseph watched them across the table, tucking in their chins and dropping their shoulders, thinking about what Alice had said about her job, how you could get to know people looking after their tendons and joints, that was the best part, if you got that trust. His mum was following Alice’s lead, straightening her spine, and letting her arms hang loose by her sides.
Joseph’s dad was first at the door after the washing up was done. Standing with his coat on and his snooker cue, waiting while they all said goodbye to Joseph’s mum. Alice was slow about her buttons and said it didn’t seem right:
– First you cook for us, and now we’re leaving you here and going to the pub.
– Don’t be silly, love.
Joseph’s mum waved her off, pleased to be made a fuss of. Ben was sleeping upstairs, and she said someone had to listen out for him. Joseph knew Alice was doing everything right for his mum, but she was pissing Eve off in the process. He could see his sister trying to keep it polite, and failing:
– We’ll take it in turns. It’s what we always do.
– Oh right, okay.
Alice blinked, awkward, and Joseph was glad when his mum smiled at her again.
– I’ll be fine, put my feet up. Do some of your exercises first.
It was wet outside and the estate was quiet, just a couple of boys on bikes with their hoods pulled up. The rain came on harder again while they were walking, so they cut through the alley past the shops, which got them to the side entrance of the snooker club. There was a reception on in the function room and a sign pointed the wedding guests round to the main door on the road, the paper damp and flapping. Joseph’s dad stood aside for Alice and they all followed her inside.
Music leaked through the walls from the party, but there were only a few in the main bar, and one game on round the corner where the snooker tables were. Joseph played his dad, because that’s what they always did on birthdays, and Arthur set up one of the other tables with Alice while Eve got the drinks in. They weren’t playing a proper game: Arthur was just explaining how the scoring worked and setting up shots so Alice could get used to holding a cue. It wasn’t done on a Saturday really, taking up a table like that, but the club wasn’t as busy as usual, probably because of the party next door, and no one was complaining. Alice was on form too, and Joseph had to admire her: new place, new people, and after the bad start with Eve and everything, she wasn’t letting it get to her, and not taking herself too seriously either. In a room full of would-have-been-professionals, and creasing up when she couldn’t get the white up the length of the table. Never made it as far as the pink, came to rest a good couple of feet from the cushion. Hard to tell what she’d been aiming for, the yellow would have been easier. It was good to see her like that, his dad and Arthur laughing with her, and Eve as well. Even the old sod who’d come in after them and was waiting for a game cracked a smile.
Joseph’s dad had a comfortable win and stayed on the table to play the next man. Their first drinks were nearly finished, so Joseph took a turn up at the bar, but there was nobody serving. A bloke came in from the function room carrying pints, nodded to Joseph and then back at the door he’d just come through:
– They’re all in there. Never put enough staff on today.
He looked familiar, but Joseph couldn’t place him: one of his mum and dad’s neighbours maybe. He’d recognised Joseph too: not at first, but after he’d passed him, gave him a longer, second look over his shoulder. Still no one behind the bar, so Joseph signalled to Arthur that he was going into the big room.
It was hot in there and full of people. Pork pies cut into quarters and pints served in plastic glasses. A few wedding guests were dancing, not pissed enough yet and a bit embarrassed, sharing fags and trying to pretend they were only talking while they shuffled to the muffled disco on the cracked lino. Someone had closed the curtains to get the right atmosphere going, only there weren’t enough to cover all the windows and Joseph could see that it was still light outside. A sign on the wall said free bar for half an hour and the queue was three deep. Everyone was getting pints and chasers and when he finally got served, the drinks Joseph ordered for his dad and Arthur came with shots he never asked for. Too many glasses for the tiny tray the barmaid brought him. Joseph didn’t think about it for long, just downed them.
His dad was over by the fruit machines when Joseph came back with the drinks. He had a small crowd gathered around him, shaking hands and back-slapping the birthday boy, and they turned and acknowledged Joseph as he was passing: men he’d known all his life, mates of his dad’s from work, dads of his friends from school. Joseph looked back when he got to the tables, but the bloke from earlier wasn’t among them.
Eve and Alice were sitting together now. Space enough for at least one person between them on the bench, and it looked like Alice was making most of the conversation, but they carried on talking after Joseph pulled a chair up with them, so he didn’t like to interrupt. Just sat back and watched Arthur playing the old sod from earlier. He listened to the karaoke from the other room, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ and then ‘I Will Survive’, felt the warmth in his throat making its way down to his guts, the chasers getting to work.
The place was filling up, smelled of wet coats and fag smoke. Arthur lost his game but Joseph’s dad was going strong. All the tables were busy and more people waiting, the nodding bloke from earlier among them: he was standing by the far wall and kept looking over, Joseph was sure of it. He watched Eve to see if she’d noticed, maybe she knew who he was. But Eve was still talking to Alice, and Arthur was in the next room up at the bar, so Joseph read the names chalked on the board to see if one of them matched: Michael, Martin, Trevor. Nothing coming back.
Arthur put his tray full of drinks down on the table, said the women next door had a line dance going:
– Slapping thighs, all wobbling chins and arses.
He shook his head and Eve laughed, told him not to be so rude: they were probably friends of hers from school. Alice smiled her thanks for the pint he’d bought her.
– Reckon this is one too many.
She raised her glass to Joseph, then pressed it against her cheeks, grinning, a bit pink-faced: alcohol or nerves, most likely both. She’d been chatting to Eve on and off for a while, all quite friendly, so maybe it was relief. The party next door was getting louder, and some joker had put the jukebox on to try and drown it out. Joseph’s dad was still playing and the bloke was still by the far wall, watching, a couple of mates with him now, and they had their heads leant in close and talking. Joseph had met one of them before, he couldn’t remember when exactly, but it was definitely at Malky’s. After he left the army, and before he went to Portugal: not a good time to have known him. Joseph tried to stop looking, keep his mind on how things were going with Alice and his sister. Arthur was talking about going back to the house: Ben would be up by now, and it was about time Joseph’s mum came out. Eve said she’d finish her drink and follow on, and Joseph thought maybe he and Alice should call a cab and go home. Getting dark out now, his bladder was full, the table covered in empty glasses. He leaned over them to Alice:
– How long do you want to stay?
– I’d like to buy a drink for your Mum when she comes.
– I’ll get it just now. One for my Dad too and then we’ll get off, eh?
– Okay.
He hadn’t talked to her all afternoon, wondered what sort of a time she’d been having. Both been drinking for hours, wine at lunch and then however many pints in here. Joseph stacked the glasses. Arthur was gone, his mum would be here soon, and they were serving up at the bar again now, so he stood up to get the drinks in. Steering himself between the tables towards the toilets first. Had to walk past the bloke to get there, hadn’t thought it through before he started. Too late to change his course because the bloke had seen him now, stepping away from the wall.
– You alright?
Not a friendly question. Joseph tried to keep his head down and keep moving, but he couldn’t get far. Stupid. Wall and bar stools and too many people. Shouldn’t have come this way. Bloke between him and the door and Joseph had to stop.
– Malky’s psycho pal, aren’t you?
Still a couple of feet away, but that was too close. In range of feet and fists, and Joseph didn’t want anything to start: not today, not now with Alice there behind him. They were laughing at him, the bloke and his mates, and the men around them were turning to see what it was all about.
– You come to have another go?
– No.
– Leave him alone, Trev, it’s his Dad’s birthday.
Joseph didn’t look to see who that was. Someone behind him, another familiar voice. Someone else moved aside and Joseph pushed his way through the gap. Past Trevor’s laughing, angry face and into the bogs.
No one followed. Quieter in there, it smelt of spliff and piss, and two little boys in wedding suits were over by the sinks. Bored with the party, they were running the taps, stuffing the plug holes with paper towels, first basin in the row already flowing over. Joseph went into the cubicle and locked the door, still no one following, but he still couldn’t piss, thinking how much of that Alice might have seen, his dad too. He’d have been used to that kind of thing a few years back. Never said anything about it to Joseph, but it stung to think about all the sly nods and elbows in the bar. Tommy Mason’s boy, he’s lost it, headcase. Joseph knew half the people in there would have a story about him, only most of them liked his dad too much to tell.
Trev. Trevor. Joseph still couldn’t remember, but it was some kind of trouble from back then, must have been. Gave him a kicking once, or got one himself, most likely. A half-memory of pain in his ribs and fingers, but he had plenty of them, couldn’t be sure if that was the right one. Nothing he’d want Alice to hear about, anyway.
She watched him come back across the room to the table, her face still red, but worried now, not laughing. Trevor was gone, and Joseph’s dad and Eve were at the table. Both stood up when they saw him, and both of them wanted to ask, but not with Alice there, and she could tell. Joseph didn’t want her embarrassed like that, but he had no explanation, nothing he could say that would cover the situation.
– I’ll go and get that drink for your Mum.
She got up and Joseph left it a minute before he followed her. They stood together up at the bar and Alice said:
– You okay?
– Yeah. You?
She nodded. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She said the barmaid had called a cab for them.
Joseph’s mum came and Eve went home. She kissed Joseph goodbye, and told Alice it had been nice to meet her, properly this time. The doors to the function room were flung wide open, wedding guests and regulars spilling over, winner stays on the tables, and the groom was beating all comers. The taxi was a long time coming, and Joseph and Alice stayed up at the bar, waiting, his mum and dad with them, watching the spectacle. Girls running about in gangs with balloons tied round their fingers; boys keeping busy swiping drinks off tables; men smoking and women dancing, jigging clumps of colourful blouses. The father of the bride put on a slow number and then talked all over it. Stood on the dance-floor hogging the microphone, remembering his wedding day and crooning out of tune with the chorus. Alice was watching the old man and smiling and Joseph put his arms around her. Couldn’t really hear what she was saying, just that she thought it was funny. Felt the hum of her voice, face pressed against his shoulder. Held her too long or too hard or something, because Alice shifted, uncomfortable, and he had to let go.