The last time I’d been in court it was to testify against a group of my erstwhile brothers-in-arms. I tried not to think about it much these days, but their names still ran through my head like a chant.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
There was a rhythm and a flow to them that chilled my skin and cramped my muscles. When the barrister had read them out in a different order, I had almost failed to recognise them as the same group.
Almost. The memory fades, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget them entirely. I was claiming rape. They were claiming it was all some happy drunken orgy that had got out of hand.
I’d already been through the agonies of a military court martial, and been found guilty of gross misconduct. Foolishly, as it turned out, I’d sought justice in the civil arena.
I might have got it, too. Then the whispers started. Whispers about the affair I’d stupidly indulged in with one of my training instructors. It was against the rules, and soon got blown up out of all proportion.
My main witness defected, and the inevitable happened.
I lost.
It cost me my career in the army, one I’d spent four years carefully constructing. It also cost me my self-respect, and the repercussions blew a hole in my relationship with my parents so big you could have driven a Boeing 777 through it, sideways on.
Still, I’d walked across that burning bridge. It had taken me a while, but eventually I’d picked up most of the pieces. I didn’t know if I could do it all again.
I looked up at O’Bryan, found him watching me intently. I led the way to the door without speaking.
“Look,” he said as I pulled it open for him to leave, “juvenile detention would break a lad like Roger. Perhaps turn him to crime permanently. It could ruin his whole life. Just say you’ll think about it, eh?”
I found myself nodding reluctantly as I stood to one side to let O’Bryan out.
“OK,” he said, “I’ll give you a few days to – Oi! Get away from it you little bastards!”
I jumped as O’Bryan’s voice rose from softly persuasive to a full-blown roar. He leapt out of the front door and went dashing towards the pavement, the briefcase swinging against his legs as he ran.
I stuck my head round the door and saw a group of kids scrambling away from the ruin that was now O’Bryan’s Mercedes, like malicious monkeys in a safari park when the game warden with the tranquilliser darts appears.
The kids scattered with a precision that spoke of long practise, all disappearing over garden hedges and through gates in different directions. O’Bryan got as far as the pavement before it dawned on him that trying to catch any of them was an utter waste of time.
He faltered and then stopped dead, putting his case down slowly on the cracked paving next to his feet. His full attention was taken by the beautiful example of the German sports car maker’s art. Or what had been, when he’d set out that morning.
I saw him lift his hands to his chubby face in horror. As he shook his head the sunlight glinted off the lenses of his little wire-rimmed glasses, as though his eyes themselves had flashed fire.
Almost against my will, I found myself following him out, stopping just behind his shoulder as he surveyed the damage.
The Merc was wrecked. The hood was in tatters, the chrome windscreen wipers had been twisted into loops, and all four tyres had been comprehensively slashed. Something heavy and sharp had been dragged along the bodywork, leaving deep gouges right down to the bare steel from headlight to taillight.
“The little bastards,” O’Bryan whispered. “Three years I’ve spent rebuilding this car. Bought it for peanuts as a right basketcase.” He turned and favoured me with a sad, lopsided smile. “I only brought it today because the clutch has gone on my Cavalier. Three bloody years.”
I didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything I could say. I’ve never owned a car, just an elderly Suzuki RGV 250 motorbike. Still, I could understand his distress. If anything happened to the bike it would be like losing a limb.
Suddenly, O’Bryan jerked round to the back of the car, and was staring at the boot lid. The lock had been punched out of it, and the lid itself was partly ajar. He yanked it open fully, looked inside with an anger that turned his already pale features ashen.
“I don’t believe it,” he muttered.
“What?”
“They’ve taken—” he broke off, scrabbling through the debris in the boot with the air of somebody who knows he isn’t going to find what he’s searching for. Finally, he slumped, defeated.
“What is it, Mr O’Bryan?” I asked again, gently. “What’s been taken?”
“What?” He focused on me, distracted. “Oh, my case notes,” he said weakly. “Private stuff, you know, important documents.”
“Would you like me to call the police?”
“No.” He gave a sigh that was almost a snort. “I don’t suppose it would do much good, would it?”
I thought of the kids I’d seen disappearing from the scene of the crime. None of them looked in double figures, let alone old enough to prosecute. “Not if you’re going to spend all your professional time trying to get them off with a caution, no,” I agreed.
O’Bryan’s face dropped suddenly, and I felt ashamed of my unworthy dig.
We went back into the house and I fed him a cup of tea with plenty of sugar in it to help deal with the shock. He recovered enough to borrow the phone to ring his garage to come and cart the remains away. Once that was done, he called himself a taxi, and departed. A sad, harassed little figure, with the weight of the world sitting heavy on his rounded shoulders.
***
After he’d gone, I rang my mother. Quite a momentous occasion in itself, if truth be told. There was a time when I would have cheerfully chewed off my own hand rather than use it to pick up the receiver and phone home. My, how things change.
I suppose, to be fair, I was never any great shakes as a daughter, even before the disgrace of my court martial, and the endless horrors of my trial.
I lost my father’s interest very early on by dint of surviving my birth when my twin brother failed to do so. My father had fiercely wanted a son to follow him into the medical profession, but the complications that followed my arrival meant that, after me, there were no more children.
I think my mother secretly hoped that I’d turn into one of those girlie girls. It wasn’t her fault that I firmly resisted any attempts to mould me into an ideal daughter. You can take a girl to ballet lessons as much as you like, but you can’t necessarily make her into a ballerina.
It was an accidental discovery on a team-building outward bound course in my late teens that led to my choice of a military career. I found I was physically tougher than I’d realised, and had the natural ability to shoot straight with a consistency that amazed the instructors.
Finally, I’d found something that earned me approval and respect. I’d gone home in triumphant defiance and dropped the news that I was joining up onto my parents with a fearful sense of excitement.
If I was expecting an emotional explosion of atomic proportions I was sadly disappointed.
Now, my mother answered the telephone herself, which saved me having to make polite, if brief, conversation with my father.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”
For a moment there was a silence brought on by surprise. Although I’d made an effort since the winter before to get back on speaking terms with my parents, we were still at the stage where contact from either party brought about a profound discomfiture, just in case either of us said the wrong thing.