Guarded Passions (22 page)

‘They work hard and they play hard.' Ruth laughed. ‘You haven't seen anything yet. You should have been here for Hugh's birthday party. He bought a barrel of beer and invited the whole platoon. Mind you, only five of them turned up and one of those was Gary.'

‘What a waste! What happened to all the beer?'

‘They drank it, of course.'

‘All of it!' She stared disbelievingly at Ruth.

‘Every last drop. Then Hugh, Gary and the other lads all crashed out on the floor and they were still sleeping it off at lunch-time next day.'

‘Do you think Hugh knew there would only be five of them coming?'

‘Probably. He had to say the entire platoon were coming or I wouldn't have agreed to him getting in a full barrel of beer. It's a bit like when there's a stag night. Then they're all ordered to attend so that wives can't stop their husbands from going. And, of course, they always drink too much and end up legless. It's all part of their image. If they didn't put on an air of bravado, half of them would desert or just go to pieces, the stress over here is so great.'

‘Yet the wives manage to stand it.'

‘Not really. They go back to England for a break and the next thing their husbands know is that they aren't coming back again. I think while you are actually out here you just go on from day to day. When you get right away though, and you look back and remember all the shootings and atrocities that go on day in and day out, you wonder why the hell you put your life on the line all the time. Your nerve goes and you know you can't face it again.

‘I wouldn't trust myself to go home to England on my own. I'm sure I wouldn't have the guts to come back again knowing what I do now. It gets the men the same way. They can't just stay in England, of course, because that would be desertion and they'd soon be picked up.'

‘So what do they do?'

‘Shoot themselves. Nothing very serious,' she added quickly, seeing Sheila's violet eyes darken with horror. ‘A bullet through the hand or the foot, something like that.'

‘Doesn't anyone suspect?'

‘Of course they do. Usually the accident is faked so well that it's difficult for anything to be proved though. Recently one soldier who shot himself through the foot was put on a charge for damaging government property. They made him pay for damaging his boots!'

‘You're joking!'

‘This place really makes the toughest of them nervous wrecks because they have to be on the alert twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Even when they're off duty they're targets for the IRA.'

The New Year's Eve Ball proved to be quite eventful. Just before midnight, Hugh and Gary arrived unexpectedly.

‘How on earth did you manage this?' Ruth asked in amazement.

‘You have Gary to thank.' Hugh grinned. ‘He managed to bribe a couple of the lads to stand in for us. They were only interested in the food so once the dancing started they were willing to take over our guard duties.'

‘Does that mean you've finished for the night?'

‘No! It just gives us a chance to see in the New Year with you.'

It was a momentous couple of hours. As the old year faded and a trumpeter heralded 1970, Sheila and Gary announced their engagement.

‘I feel as excited as if it was someone in my own family,' Ruth exclaimed as, with tears in her eyes, she hugged and kissed Sheila.

‘You will both come to our wedding … promise?'

‘Of course they will,' Gary assured her. ‘Hugh is going to be my best man.'

‘It rather depends on when you decide to get married,' Ruth said hesitantly. ‘The sooner the better …'

Sheila's eyes widened in delight. ‘You're not! When?' she breathed ecstatically.

‘What's going on?' Hugh asked, frowning as he looked from Ruth to Sheila and back again.

‘You two hatching up something?' Gary asked, his intensely blue eyes puzzled.

Ruth turned to Hugh, her cheeks pink, biting her lip as she tried to find the right words.

As Ruth gazed at Hugh he looked perplexed, then, as realisation dawned, he took her tenderly in his arms. ‘When, my darling?' he breathed, kissing her so ardently that she felt a dizzy uprush of emotion.

‘In June, I think,' she whispered, her face radiant.

Ruth was waiting on the doorstep for her mother and Lucy to arrive. It was a mild day in early May, but scudding rain clouds marred the pale blue sky, bringing frequent showers.

She felt exhausted. Hugh had laughed at the way she had cleaned the house from top to bottom in readiness for their guests.

‘It's your mother who's coming, not a Sergeant-Major's inspection,' he told her when he had arrived home the previous evening to find her resting on the bed, still clutching a duster.

Ruth found it hard to explain to Hugh that, because it was her mother's first visit since they had been in Ireland, she felt it was important that their home looked its best.

It was almost six months since she had last seen any of her family and she felt both excited and apprehensive. She gazed down at her swollen figure and wondered how Lucy would react when she saw her. She tried to remember her own feelings when her mother had been expecting Lucy. Her memories of those days were hazy, overtaken as they were by her father's death, the time spent at Aunt Julia's, then the move to Bulpitts, and, later, after Donald Brady had died, to Hill Farm.

Her only clear recollection of that time was of waiting with Mark in Aunt Julia's sitting-room for her mother to come back from hospital. Lucy had been such a tiny scrap, wrapped up in a shawl inside a carrycot. And now she was already at school and would soon be an aunt. It seemed ludicrous.

Ruth looked at her watch and went inside to switch on the kettle. The waiting was making her feel edgy. Perhaps they should have stuck to the rules and let her mother and Lucy travel on the Army bus that went into Belfast airport to pick up soldiers returning from leave. It had been Gary's idea to collect them in his car, knowing the bus took so long. It used a devious route back to Londonderry in order to avoid the A1 out of Belfast, because that was a known IRA target.

‘We'll be back here in just over half an hour of the plane landing,' he had assured her. ‘I'll drive down the A1 so fast that not even a first-class sniper would stand a chance of getting us!'

A car pulling up outside announced their arrival. There were voices, people on the path and, suddenly, the hallway was crowded. Then Ruth was kissing her mother and Lucy and fighting back her tears of joy at being reunited with them both.

‘Is that the baby in there?' Lucy asked in amazement, patting Ruth's distended stomach. ‘He must be ever so huge!'

It wasn't until the meal was over, and Gary had left to go back on duty, that her mother seemed to relax fully. Ruth put it down to the journey, so she was surprised when, after they had tucked Lucy up in bed, and settled down in the sitting-room to have a coffee, her mother said sharply, ‘He's not coming back again tonight, is he?'

‘Who? Gary?'

Her mother nodded, tight-lipped, her grey eyes unfathomable.

‘I shouldn't think so. Why?' Ruth asked in surprise.

Helen sighed softly and shook her head. ‘I don't know … I just feel uneasy in his company.'

‘What do you mean?' A flush stained Ruth's cheeks as she spoke.

‘He's rather … strange. The way he dresses, for one thing. That flat cap and that violent red and black check jacket. In your father's day a Guardsman would never have dreamed of going out looking like that.'

Ruth choked back her giggles at the look of disdain on her mother's face. ‘You haven't seen Hugh's “bookies' jacket” yet. Black, white and yellow check! It's outrageous – especially when he wears it with those grey and white striped trousers that he had on when he came to meet you!'

‘Why
do
they dress like that?'

Ruth shrugged. ‘They're all big kids at heart, aren't they? It's almost a competition to see who can look the most flamboyant. They work hard and dice with death when they're on duty so it's a form of escapism. Their way of letting off steam, I suppose.'

‘Your father never behaved like that!'

‘No, but then he wasn't constantly in danger. For most of his Army career he was a Training Sergeant at depot, a cushy routine number. He wouldn't dress like they do over here because he always felt he had to set the young crows an example, both on and off duty. Hugh and Gary and their mates don't have those sort of responsibilities, but they have other pressures. They work four hours on, four hours off, for ten days at a stretch. They're so exhausted that they fall asleep as they come through the door, before they can even eat a meal, or take their boots off. And they have to be back at the barracks again within four hours, remember.'

‘Yes, I realise it must be hard on them but …'

‘Hard!' Ruth challenged, her grey eyes steely. ‘You don't know the half, Mum. Even when they've finished their ten days on rota they often go straight on stand-by. That means they can't go anywhere because they're on permanent call and can be called out at any time of the day or night if there is an incident. It happened last Sunday. I'd spent all morning cooking a roast and had just started dishing it up when Hugh was called out. Charlie, next door, and Stan, across the road, were called out at the same time, so I invited their wives in to help eat our dinner!'

‘Yes, it must be very difficult.' Helen sighed.

‘It is! As I said, drinking and dressing-up is their way of having fun and proving to themselves they're still alive, if you like. They do everything to excess. They drink too much, smoke too much and behave like overgrown kids. It's their way of forgetting the danger they're in every time they go on duty. They all do it. There's no “keeping up with the Jones's” over here, like there is in civvy street, because they all get the same money, live in the same kind of houses and have identical furniture. Even their Army uniform is standard issue. The hard part is remembering that you
are
an individual. I sometimes think the men manage it better than the women.'

‘I'm sure what you say is right, but it still doesn't make me like Gary Collins any better,' Helen said firmly.

‘Well, you will probably see quite a lot of him while you're here because he's Hugh's best friend. His girlfriend, Sheila, stayed with us over Christmas and we had a great time.'

‘I thought he must be the Cockney chap you wrote and told me about. His father was in the Guards and disappeared before he was born?'

‘That's right.'

Helen's face grew even more stony. She stood up. ‘I've got a dreadful headache, Ruth. I think I'll have an early night.'

Bemused by her mother's reaction, Ruth talked it over with Hugh. He could offer no explanation and thought Ruth was being fanciful.

‘You're imagining it.' He smiled. ‘Your mother is probably just tired after her journey.'

Next morning Helen seemed to be her normal self, so Ruth pushed the matter from her mind and concentrated on making her mother's and Lucy's stay as enjoyable as possible. There was a lull in IRA activities, so Ruth suggested they should go into Londonderry. She warned her mother that they would be searched and persuaded her to empty everything out of her handbag except her purse and some form of identity.

As they crossed the bridge over the River Foyle, Helen was shocked at the sight of so many heavily-armed soldiers on duty.

‘Just look at them; they're only young boys!' she exclaimed.

‘Most of them are nineteen,' Ruth said nonchalantly. She had seen them so many times before, that now she scarcely noticed them.

Having been thoroughly searched before they crossed the bridge, Helen was taken aback when they were again checked, this time by the RUC, when they reached the other side. Even Lucy's tiny handbag was turned out. For a moment she was in tears when the few coins she had in it rolled onto the pavement. They were quickly retrieved and returned to her by people queuing to pass through the turnstile and she was soon smiling again.

Helen was appalled by the devastation in the centre of Derry, the boarded-up windows, the gaping holes and the buildings cordoned off because of unexploded bombs or dangerous masonry.

‘Let's go back,' she urged. ‘There's really no pleasure in shopping here. I don't like having to turn out my bag every time we go inside a shop or pass through one of these check-points. They seem to have them all over the place.'

Ruth readily agreed. She wasn't feeling too well. The tension she felt, knowing she was responsible for the safety of her mother and Lucy, together with the heat and dust, had brought on a headache that was getting worse all the time.

Taking Lucy's hand, she led them down a side street which she knew would bring them out at the check-point nearest the bridge. There was a queue and, as they stood waiting to pass through, she heard the sound of running feet and the sharp report of hand-guns firing. Her anxiety made her heart pound. The queue began to move forward and, to her dismay, she saw that it meant going through a turnstile. Knowing she would have difficulty she tried to back off, urging Lucy and her mother forward in her place.

‘Wait for me on the other side,' she told them. ‘I'd get stuck in that so I'll walk round it.'

The moment she began to edge away a policeman's hand clamped down on her shoulder. There were angry murmurs from the crowd and Ruth felt herself being roughly pushed and shoved, while in the background the sound of shooting and general commotion became louder.

Urgently she explained her predicament. The policeman looked suspicious but called a woman colleague over and she was taken to one side, where she was searched and then escorted to the far side of the check-point to where Helen and Lucy were waiting.