Another man said, ‘People up here, Orkney people, they can guard your privacy. A stranger comes by boat or by air and walks to the first house he finds and asks for directions to a particular man or woman’s home. He’ll not be told. They protect their own. The one they’re looking for could be in the next house, could be in the kitchen drinking coffee, could be out at the back fixing the sewage pump, but the stranger will not be told. It was explained to me, and I was told that a man came back, was unwell, damaged, came back from away over the water, and a nurse called three times a week to change his dressings, and he’s out somewhere close to Inga Ness and down from Fifty Hill, but no one will say. Who knows? It’s like he’s guarded… Myself, I never saw him, could just be for the fairies.’
He stood in the doorway.
Bright autumn sunshine lit that side of Rostocker Strasse. His body threw a dark shadow into the bar area. He leaned heavily on the surgical stick, let it take his weight. The last few steps from the Hauptbahnhof had been a struggle. Probably should have queued for a taxi at the rail terminus, but there had been too many indignities in his recent life and convalescence. To have paid a cab driver would have seemed feeble. He collected his breath, then was nudged. Not rudely, but unpleasant. It was the lunch hour and men and women had disgorged from the office blocks along the main drag and needed to eat, and wanted to get past him. He stepped awkwardly aside, was not thanked. He would not be hurried. The wind was on his back and at two tables clients turned and scowled and one flicked his fingers as if to get him inside or out, and the door shut and the draught excluded. He was impassive. There was little that any of them inside, eating or waiting for service, could have done that would have fazed him.
He saw the pictures of the big masted ships on the walls and most had full sails, all faded with age and needing cleaning. Saw the memorabilia stacked on shelves, navigation equipment from centuries before, and wood plaques that commemorated ships of the nineteenth century. Crowded with beer bottles, the tables were heavy, of weathered wood, scratched but well scrubbed. The chairs looked hard, uncomfortable. A manager hurried between tables and tried to placate the most impatient customers, and he was pointed out. A complaint: could the street door please be closed?
He was elbowed aside. Latecomers, going to be lucky if a free table were found for them.
The door stayed open. The manager advanced on him.
He would have been determining how considerable his annoyance should be at the cold air, at the open door, at the noise and fumes of Rostocker Strasse entering his premises. But the remark was swallowed. He would have seen what Gaz was confronted with each morning on getting into the bathroom, wherever he had slept, and staring at the mirror, barely recognising himself. The manager would have known he faced a man who had stood his corner, had looked death in the eye, had turned his back on it, had survived, had come a long road. Would have faced a pale complexion, and seen eyes that were deep set and dull and lips that were thin, almost bloodless and chapped, and hair that had lost lustre. There was a presence about the man, as if he had been in a bad place but had turned away from an inevitability and had crawled out. Other customers waited for admission behind Gaz but he waved them back imperiously. Did he understand? Might have done, might have made the link. How could he help and how could he oblige?
Gaz told him, hesitantly and in a soft voice. Spoke her name. Not easy for him to say it. He thought of what the manager might have known… of the customers who had pored over a laptop and had read a local blog from far up in the Circle: that she had been tracked by an intelligence officer, had been ferried up to the small frontier town, had been there for a few hours before being sent back to her job. The manager said, poor and accented English, that she was in the kitchen. Should he get her? Gaz shook his head.
Was as frightened of seeing her as he had been nervous of speaking her name. The door was closed behind him. He stood close to the line of hooks on which bags and coats were hung. In front of him was the entrance to the kitchens, those swing doors that waitresses kicked open. The manager had left him… Being here, in the Rostocker Strasse bar, marked a late stage in his planned, hoped for, journey. The place was at full capacity. She might look through him. Might acknowledge him but seem disinterested. Might scowl, glower…
He had finally been turfed out of hospital. Had been there several weeks, seen out the summer there. His pick-up from the Barents was usually described by the nursing personnel as a miracle: a fishing boat that had been idling in that area, no reason given, had spotted him, needle in a haystack, and him unconscious. The second miracle was that he had survived a poisoned wound. One of the girls had come to take him back to the UK. She’d said on the journey, rather casually, that whatever overstretched umbilical cord had linked them was now being scissored. They, the department she now worked for, did not expect to see or hear from him again. He would not have asked her, would have thought it demeaning. Had said, instead, that he would have enjoyed a beer, a chat, a reminisce, with Knacker, who had not visited him while his wound was being cleansed and his health rebuilt. She had said that he had left the Service, no longer required, spent his time up at Hadrian’s Wall, where his wife was a digger, a site close to Hexham: should not have told him, probably could have bitten off her own tongue.
He had flown back, was allowed a month’s free stay in a one-bedroom apartment in Hereford, close to his old barracks, and she had waved him off. Gaz had taken a train north, then a taxi, had been left at the Roman town of Corbridge, had walked among flattened ruins, then had come to an archaeological site. A score of men and women were scraping and digging and brushing. He had called out, a loud voice, though still with a croak, ‘I am looking for Knacker, can anyone help me?’ One woman had looked up. Pleasant enough face, a resigned smile, had wiped her muddied hands on filthy clothes but had not bothered to shake earth out of her hair. ‘You one of his old chaps? They booted him out, surplus to needs. Got you into trouble, did he? Not here, up by Turret 36B. You have transport?’ He hadn’t. She would have seen that he was on two sticks, thin as a rake, pale as parchment. Nice woman, and he wondered how she survived alongside Knacker. Transport was arranged. He had been driven close to the location, then dropped. Not a farmhouse in sight, open rolling countryside. He had walked to the Wall. Seen a hunched figure, gazing out into the middle distance from close to the small square base of the turret… and nothing much to say. ‘‘How are you… Good to see you… On the mend I hope?’’ He asked about the girl, was told where to find her. Without her, on the ground and above Deir al-Siyarqi and when the goats had stampeded, he would not have lived, and without her picture in his mind his life would have failed in the dinghy. Knacker had said, “Was always proud of you and of the operation. Matchless was good, one of our best results. I like that image of my ‘rough men’. Don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about.’’
Gaz, in his hospital bed, no visitors other than tight-lipped staff, and short times of day for talk with the guards, had made the big decision: no more the island and Aggie – no more the dream of the feisty girl whose anarchy made him laugh. And he had dumped his fear that being with the goat herd girl would be the equivalent of living inside a shrine of gratitude. ‘‘You went visiting, visiting violence, know what I mean. Sleeping safely because rough men stand ready to visit violence on our enemies, wonderful stuff. Me, I’m out of it. Not wanted. Just have memories, fuck-all else. But we bashed them, Gaz, hit them hard and where it hurts. One of my best shows, and…’’ But Gaz was edging away, retreating, and left Knacker hunched and quivering with excitement as he gazed out on a wilderness where a mist was thickening. Thought the man who had played God was now little more than a husk, and sad… He’d hitched a lift into Newcastle, then bought an air ticket for the morning,