Open Writing

The truth was that I was a coward. Not - at least I can claim this in my defence - a conventional coward. I had enough nerve to stick my neck out a bit, hence the nickname High-risk Hussy.

What I lacked was that bit of steel in the gut that enables you to kill another man. In a soldier, that's something of a handicap.

I didn't know at the start. In theory, I'd cheerfully mow down the IRA boys like scything grass. In practice, as it turned out, I had problems. I was gun-shy.

It wasn't until the training began to get specific that the first doubts began to crawl into my mind. I loved the sheer sensuality of gunmanship, and the sleek function of oiled parts. As Tiger said, I was among the best.

I was all right on the first training films. They show them in the shooting range and every time you fire the film stops to show where your shot went.
The first ones were of men dressed as Arabs crawling over some Middle East terrain and I don't know if it was the un-familiarity of the scene or what, but it wasn't much different from knocking over ducks at the fair.

Then we came on to films of Belfast street scenes: a couple of shops, people passing, men on bikes, women with baskets, kids playing, and then suddenly a couple of blokes would run in and plant a bomb.

Even though they were the enemy, even though I still remembered the girl who painted a van with her flesh, they still looked like ... well, ridiculously I suppose, like ordinary men. The first doubt was born.

From that moment on I wondered what I'd be like when I had to shoot a man on the hoof. Every day, the doubt grew a little. And there was always the memory of Michael.

No one ever suspected. The Army were delighted with me. They had a hell of a job infiltrating republican areas because most Englishmen could impersonate a Zulu as well as an Irishman.

For a start, no language course in the world can teach you the nuances of Irish accents, and there are a thousand other tiny distinctions. In a bar, an Irishman hangs over his drink, nursing it, cradling it. The Englishman sits back and looks at it as though it's a bloody painting. When an Irishman goes into a bar, even a strange one, he immediately begins talking, whereas the English all behave as though they're deaf mutes with typhoid.

None of that was a problem to me, of course, so when I joined the Secret Squirrels I volunteered for mingling jobs. More often than not it meant hanging around certain bars, seeing who was with whom, and picking up the odd bit of chat. And it could be hard on the nerves. If you did it wrong, it was a job with a life expectancy of around twenty seconds. That was when they called me High-risk Hussy.

As Tomkins said, I'd been one of the star pupils at gunman-ship. On these missions, as insurance, I often had my nine-milli tucked down the back of my pants. Half-cocked of course. It wasn't really that I was scared of shooting myself. It moved the whole business of shooting one step further away, that was all. I did the mingling. Tiger and the others did the kicking down doors and the pump-gun stuff. I was happy with that. But inevitably the day had to come when I had to pull the trigger.

There was a bar in Derry where I used to have the odd drink-alone, of course — and this night Tiger waited for me in the car. It was parked over a hundred yards away, and he kept well down out of sight.

So did the two provos, in their car.

When I came out, I had a good look up and down the road and saw nothing. It was a dripping wet night, with the air full of mist and drizzle, and visibility what you'd expect twenty foot down in the Irish Sea.

With all the time in the world, I set off, with Tiger still well down and out of sight. Then I saw it, dipped headlights, and a hundred yards behind. I still wasn't too worried: no one had started when we started, and I hadn't seen anyone parked near us.

Just to be sure, I did the round-the-block treatment. First right, first right, first right again, and you're out on the road you left, so unless someone was daft, drunk or murderous they wouldn't still be behind you ...

They were. Two dipped headlights, not getting any nearer, but not falling back either.

'We've got a fish on, Tiger,' I said.

I saw him pull his gun out of the back of his trousers.

'Let's take them,' he said. 'Find a farm track.'

I changed down and then suddenly stuck my foot down. We took off, and so did the car behind. The wipers were slapping the muck and mist off the windscreen but I still had to lean forward to see my way through the dirty night.

A car coming the other way took one look at us and swerved straight up the nearest side street. Two lovers, hand in hand, raced off into the night when they, saw us. They pick up the signals early over there.

Just then, I didn't have a doubt at all. I was exhilarated. By some miracle, all my senses had instantly been sharpened. The night was blacker and wetter, my own lights and those in the mirror much, much brighter. My fingertips tingled as I turned the wheel, hot where I'd been holding it, cold where I hadn't. In the engine's roar, I thought I could hear the movement of every single mechanical part. I'd never felt so vital in my life, and it wasn't until I looked over at Tiger's grinning face that I realised I was laughing.

Those seconds when death is on your heels have a fine high rapture you don't find anywhere else, including bed. Then, for a timeless moment, I was hearing the rush of the earth spinning through the universe.

I was on the road west, howling round corners and thrashing the engine, when I caught a glimpse of a rough track on the left.

'Now!' I shrieked. We both knew exactly what we had to do. I hit the brake, spun the wheel, and slid into the lane, crashing into the bank on my side. I saw the door open and Tiger, his head tucked in, rolled out into the night.
With the door swinging, I slammed it into gear and stamped down the accelerator. The engine screamed, the wheels skidded in the mud, then gripped and the car leapt down the track in a series of lurching hops. The lights were in the mirror again, and again I hit the brake and spun the car round sideways. By the time the other car came round the corner, I was behind the bonnet with both hands holding my nine-milli.

He switched his engine off, then his lights. All the tumult had ceased. The black night dripped around me and gurgled in the ditches. As my night vision came, I began to make out the hedgerows on either side, and a shadow moving beside the other car. I held my fire.

A side window went in my car and the metal sang out three hollow notes as bullets ripped into it. I still didn't fire.

Then I heard two shots, then another two and saw the muzzle flashes, and I knew Tiger was coming at them from behind. For a second I got a glimpse of him, zigzagging and double-tapping as he came.

That was the idea. We were a pincer movement. What he didn't know was that only his half of the pincer was working.

He shouted something, my name I think. I heard him shoot again and saw the gunman nearest him was on the floor. Tiger was crouched in the middle of the road and I heard him shout again.

He must've been wondering why I wasn't shooting. By that time the other gunman thought I was dead or certainly injured because he'd edged round my side of his car. Shielded by it, he brought the Armalite up and pumped one, two, three shots into Tiger.

Then I did hear him call my name. 'Joe,' he shouted. 'Are you okay Joe?'

The gunman ran out, paused to look back at my car, and then shot Tiger again. He ran past him, his feet sludging in the mud, away into the night. Tiger, his arms clasped over his stomach, sank into the mud.

I was still crouched behind the bonnet. My right hand clasped the nine-milli, which was in turn held by my left, resting on the car. Knees bent, elbows straight - all copybook stuff. If I'd fired.

But I hadn't. Not one shot. And all the rapture of danger had evaporated.
The silence which followed had the same intensity as the silence after the cars crashed on Michael.

I straightened, took a couple of deep breaths, and went over to Tiger. Although he was doubled up, kneeling, his legs kept jerking.

When he heard my feet in the mud, the pale smudge of his face turned up in the dark and I could see the relief there.

'You're okay?'

He thought I was dead too.

'Yeah.'

'Stoppage?'

That was what made him such a good pro. Even then he had to know what had gone wrong. Perhaps I should just have said yes and everyone would've put it down to bad luck. But I couldn't do that.

'No,' I said. 'I just didn't shoot.'

'You half-cocked bastard,' he said. Then he fell forward, coughing.

Later, when he was in hospital, I gave a candid account of what had happened to three men in a half-lit garage workshop in Belfast. They asked few questions. At the end they conferred briefly. They told me I was finished. I would be flown out the next day.

They said a few things that I don't remember too clearly. About wasting time and money on training me. And about losing one of their best men because of me.

But there was one comment I do remember, although I don't remember which one said it. It was as I turned to go.

In a quiet, refined voice, he said, 'You had everything, Hussy. Everything except guts.'

I did try to see Tiger before I left but they wouldn't let me in the ward. I stood at the door and waved. That was when he gave me the big thumbs-up and I thought'perhaps he wasn't too bad. That was the last I saw of him.

And until that afternoon in the Drawbridge Hotel I'd made a pretty good job of dropping the shutters on the whole incident. The trouble was, once I'd revived the memory, I couldn't shake it off again.

The two cars. The narrow lane. The high hedgerows. The crouching gunmen. Tiger running on to their guns. The muzzle flashes in the dark. The thin painful crack of pistols. My silent gun, warm in my fist.

Where did it get me? What did any of it mean?

I took the note out again and re-read it.

RING AND YOUR FEE WILL BE DELIVERED

One meaningless note. One posthumous white jacket.

Unfrisked, I suddenly realised. Not that there'd be anything in the pockets. After all, it was new. Still, if you're in the snooping business, the least you can do is to snoop ...

I found it in the right-hand pocket: a smudged one-inch square photograph taken in one of those passport booths. Blurred as it was, there was no mistaking Striker. Nestling up under his left ear was a girl who appeared to be young, fair-haired, and from what little I could see she'd be welcome to come and nestle under my ear any time she was free.

The way she was burrowing into him, and the look on his face said there was a lot of affection in that booth. Some people might say love, but that's a word I try to avoid. The minute you use it, all your calculations stop adding up.

There was something else too, and I had to study Striker's face until I could see it. Triumph, that's what it was. The two of them were saying 'Look at us being happy and not giving a damn about what you think,'

There was another thing about it too, and it worried me. I'd seen the girl before. I couldn't think where.

**

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