He picked up on the Countess’s opener with enthusiasm. Yes, he had been at many of the big demos.
‘The Vietnam protests were the worst. The IMF summit was bad, too. I was really scared at that one. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking, literally, and I was afraid my colleagues were going to notice, but they were probably just as terrified as I was. I just didn’t think so at the time, standing there in the front line with my helmet on, and my shield and baton in my hands, like some soldier in a war I didn’t understand. It was horrendous.’
‘But part of the job.’
She’d meant it to be supportive, he realised that from the tone of her voice. Nevertheless, the harshness of his reaction surprised him.
‘Police work was a choice. I could have gone back on it, resigned from the force and got myself another job. No one forced me to join up. It’s no excuse.’
Her hand found its way to the back of his head, and she stroked him where once there had been hair.
‘Are you looking for one? An excuse, I mean.’
He ignored her question and went on sombrely:
‘Pig, rozzer, plod, fascist, scum, bastard… some of the things they used to shout after me.’
‘Not everyone, surely.’
The protesters did, though, and how he hated them. Their long hair, their placards and banners, their eloquence and the way they stuck together… he hated them all. But more than anything he hated their studied lack of respect, the way they disdainfully turned their backs on everything he believed in, everything his parents had worked for all their lives, the old values dying off one by one while they jeered and gloated. No, he’d almost forgotten: what he really hated most was their daring… their dedication to the cause and their daring.
‘The protesters weren’t scared. They had a cause to fight for, and they had each other.’
There was no longer resentment in his voice, only puzzlement. The Countess sensed the ambiguity.
‘And you could never be a part of it because you had a job to do, guarding the established order, is that it?’
‘I was a guard, yes. In front of the US Embassy, looking out on a foaming sea of rage, an open target because of the errors of others. It wasn’t me showering little kids with napalm and dropping bombies on the villages.’
And then there were the ubiquitous red flags. Sometimes just a simple rag on a stick, sometimes the fine standards of the trade union branches, but always red. He was no supporter of US involvement in Vietnam, but no matter how the spoiled hippies of the world looked at it, the United States was a democracy and the Soviet Union was not. The youth of the Eastern bloc weren’t protesting, or certainly not against the ruling establishment, the oh-so-marvellous Communist state made sure of that. But the pamphlets, flyers and folders the protesters handed out showed images of Vietnamese children caught up in the horrors of war, while photos of Soviet tanks rolling into Prague to crush the Spring Uprising there were seldom, if ever, disseminated. Besides, the very foundation of the freedom enjoyed by these young people had been paid for in American lives and dollars only twenty-five years before during World War II, but none of them ever stopped to think about that. He went on:
‘The Christmas bombings of Hanoi… I remember the Swedish Prime Minister joining the rallies against them, and I actually agreed with him. You cannot save a village by wiping it out, by burning fields, by destroying houses, by locking up or killing those who live there. His words rang true, though the Americans didn’t care to hear them. Vietnam was horrendous, but I couldn’t see why that had to be taken out on Danish police officers, and still don’t to this day. What are you smirking about?’
He sat up, and she kissed him on the cheek.
‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter.’
‘No, tell me.’
‘The Christmas bombings of Hanoi took place in 1972, Olof Palme’s protest was in 1968, and he was Minister of Education at the time. He didn’t become prime minister until the year after, but it’s true, his criticisms did anger Washington. President Johnson called his ambassador home from Sweden.’
Sometimes Simonsen just couldn’t be doing with all this knowledge of hers. Besides, she’d probably still been in kindergarten at the time. But that didn’t stop her, she was such a know-all about everything, it got on his nerves. Unwittingly, the Countess contradicted him.
‘What are bombies, anyway? I’ve never heard of them before.’
He shook his head in annoyance.
‘It’s stupid of me, talking about all this now. Who needs it?’
‘No, it’s all right, Simon.’
She held his gaze.
‘Really, it’s all right.’
His heart attack had well and truly stirred up the stew inside his head, he had sensed it for quite some time. But why must he start thinking about such unpleasantness now? It would have been a hell of a lot more fitting if he’d showed her some attention, gone out of his way to be nice to her, that kind of thing. They still had breakfast to share, too. Then all of a sudden it struck him why he had begun to dwell on such uncomfortable recollections. He smiled to himself and said:
‘I don’t know why I go on about all these things, it’s decades ago now and it doesn’t matter anyway. This all started after my operation.’
‘You don’t always have to explain.’
Maybe she was right, she often was. He went on, softly now:
‘There are two expressions from back then that I absolutely despise. One is bombies, which is what the Vietnamese called the Americans’ anti-personnel cluster bombs. They were about the size of a tennis ball and looked like a child’s toy.’
‘How awful.’
‘Awful doesn’t go near enough. The second expression is crowd control.’
As a young officer he had been sent back to school. Or rather, he had been sent on a course, but it was the same thing. Crowd control was a shiny new concept, and the English designation made it sound so appealing in the classroom. The police had to learn how to manage large assemblies of people, but what did their fine theories help once you were standing there with a tiny strip of no-man’s-land in front of you, three backward paces off getting crushed to death against the iron railings of the Embassy. In the fray, crowd control was a simple matter of survival, a fact of which the powers that be were only too aware of and even complicit in. Only he hadn’t realised until much later. Crowd control…
He snorted in disgust.
‘They should have called it generation control instead. Then we’d have known what we were up against.’
He pulled the duvet aside and got up.
‘Weren’t you a part of your own generation? I mean, you were allowed to be there, too.’
‘The sixties weren’t about inclusivity. Tolerance was a thing the people with the correct opinions demanded rather than practised. Shall we shower?’
The Countess considered the offer with surprise at first, and then laughed.
‘Yes, why not? But tell me about your demo first.’
He sounded almost wistful.
‘It got me smoking. And I could really do with a cigarette now.’
‘You mean, you smoked on duty?’
‘What do you think? Of course I didn’t! But afterwards…’
‘Go on.’
‘Later, later. I’ve got what feels like the entire Catholic Church to tackle tomorrow. Now that’s what I’d call a sizeable opponent. Too much for a bunch of long-haired dropouts, at any rate. Maybe you can offer me some support, erudite as you are? You read books for fun, and I haven’t even prepared yet.’