"Oh dear!"
She gave a small shrug. "It would be all right if it was amusing… but it isn't."
She seemed such a confident young woman that he wondered if she was being kind, trading a weakness for advice in order to allow him to do the same. "I never had to face that specific problem, of course," he told her, "but I do remember one particularly tough sergeant who made a habit of taking me on in front of the men. It was all very subtle, mostly in the tone of his voice… but nothing I could challenge him about without looking stupid. You can't take a man's stripe away because he repeats your orders in a patronizing way."
"What did you do?"
"Swallowed my pride and asked for help. He was transferred out of the company within a month. Apparently, I wasn't the only one having trouble with him."
"Except my subalterns think the sun shines out of the sergeant's backside. They let him get away with murder because the men respond to him. I feel I ought to be able to handle him. It's what I've been trained for, and I'm not convinced my CO's any more sympathetic to women in the army than my sergeant is. I'm fairly sure he'll tell me that if I can't take the heat I should get out of the kitchen-" she made an ironic correction-"or, more likely, get back to it because it's where a woman belongs." As James had guessed, she had chosen a subject to draw him out, but she hadn't intended to reveal so much. She told herself it was because James had been in the army and knew the power a sergeant could wield.
He watched her for a moment. "What sort of bullying does this sergeant go in for?"
"Character assassination," she said in a matter-of-fact tone that belied the very real difficulties it was causing her. "There's a lot of whispering about slags and tarts behind my back and sniggers whenever I appear. Half of the men seem to think I'm a dyke who needs curing, the other half think I'm the platoon bicycle. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a drip-drip of poison that's starting to have an effect."
"You must feel very isolated," murmured James, wondering how much Mark had told her about his situation.
"It's certainly getting that way."
"Doesn't the fact that your subalterns kowtow to him suggest they're having problems as well? Have you asked them about it?"
She nodded. "They deny that they are… say he responds to them exactly as a senior NCO should." She shrugged. "Judging by his smiles afterward, I guessed the conversation went straight back to him."
"How long's it been going on?"
"Five months. He was posted to the unit while I was on leave in August. I never had any trouble before, then-wham!-I get stuck with Jack the Ripper. I'm on a month's secondment to Bovington at the moment, but I'm dreading what I'll find when I get back. If I have any reputation left, it'll be a miracle. The trouble is, he's good at his job, he certainly gets the best out of the men."
They both looked up as the door opened and Mark came in with a tray. "Perhaps Mark has some ideas," James suggested. "The army's always had its share of bullies, but I confess I have no idea how you deal with a situation like this."
"What?" asked Mark, handing Nancy a glass.
She wasn't sure she wanted him to know. "Trouble at the office," she said lightly.
James had no such qualms. "A new sergeant, recently posted to the unit, is undermining Nancy's authority with her men," he said, taking his glass. "He derides women behind her back-calls them tarts or lesbians-presumably with the intention of making life so uncomfortable for Nancy that she'll leave. He's good at his job and popular with the men, and she's worried that if she reports him it'll reflect badly on her, even though she's never had any trouble exercising authority before. What should she do?"
"Report him," said Mark promptly. "Demand to be told what his average length of service is with any unit. If he moves regularly then you can be certain that similar accusations have been made against him in the past. If they have-indeed, even if they haven't-insist on full disciplinary charges rather than a quiet passing of the buck to someone else. Men like this get away with it because commanding officers would rather transfer them quietly than draw attention to the poor discipline in their ranks. It's a big problem in the police service. I sit on a committee that's producing guidelines on how to deal with it. The first rule is: don't pretend it isn't happening."
James nodded. "Sounds like good advice to me," he said gently.
Nancy smiled slightly. "I suppose you knew Mark was on this committee?"
He nodded.
"So what's to report?" she asked with a sigh. "A good old guy swaps jokes with his men. Have you heard the one about the tart who joined the Engineers because she was looking for a screw? Or the dyke who poked her finger in the sump to check the lubrication levels?"
James looked helplessly toward Mark.
"Sounds like a rock and a hard place," said Mark sympathetically. "If you show an interest in a man, you're a tart… if you don't, you're a lesbian."
"Right."
"Then report him. Whichever way you look at it, it's sexual intimidation. The law's on your side, but it's powerless unless you exercise your rights."
Nancy exchanged an amused glance with James. "He'll be suggesting I take out injunctions next," she said lightly.
14
"Where the hell are you going?" hissed Fox, grabbing Wolfie by his hair and swinging him around.
"Nowhere," said the child.
He had moved as quietly as a shadow, but Fox was quieter. There had been nothing to alert Wolfie to his father's presence behind the tree, yet Fox had heard him. From the middle of the wood came the loud and persistent buzz of a chainsaw, which drowned all other sounds, so how had Fox heard Wolfie's stealthy approach? Was he a magician?
Shrouded in his hood and scarf, Fox was staring across the lawn at the open French windows where the old man and the two people Wolfie had seen earlier were looking for the source of the noise. The woman-for there was no mistaking her gender without her hat or bulky fleece-stepped through the opening and raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes. "Over there," her lips said plainly, as she lowered the binoculars and pointed through the skeletal trees to where the chainsaw gang was operating.
Even Wolfie with his sharp sight could barely make out the dark-coated figures against the black of the serried trunks, and he wondered if the lady, too, was a magician. His eyes widened as the old man came out to join her and scanned the line of trees where he and Fox were hiding. He felt Fox draw back into the lee of the trunk before his hand whipped Wolfie around and clamped his face against the rough serge of his coat. "Keep still," Fox muttered.
Wolfie would have done, in any case. There was no mistaking the bulk of the hammer in Fox's coat pocket. Whatever fears the razor held for him, the hammer held more, and he didn't know why. He'd never seen Fox use it-just knew it was there-but it held a multitude of terrors for him. He thought it was something he'd dreamed, but he couldn't remember when or what the dream was about. Carefully, so that Fox wouldn't notice, he held his breath and eased a space between himself and the coat.
The chainsaw coughed suddenly and fell silent, and the voices from the Manor terrace carried clearly across the grass. "…seemed to have fed Eleanor Bartlett a load of nonsense. She quoted terra nullius and Lockean theory at me like a sort of mantra. Presumably she got it from the travelers because they're unlikely terms for her to know. Rather archaic as a matter of fact."
"No-man's-land?" asked the woman's voice. "Does it apply?"
"I wouldn't think so. It's a concept of dominion. In simple terms, the first arrivals in an uninhabited area can lay claim to it on behalf of their sponsor, usually a king. I can't imagine it could be applied to disputed land in Britain in the twenty-first century. The obvious claimants are James or Dick Weldon… or the village, on the grounds of common usage."