‘Forget it, Pippa,’ Harrison chided. ‘They’re not worth your breath.’
They stopped on the fringe of the gathering. ‘You’re right, Tom, of course.’ She looked at Casey directly for the first time. ‘You’re a friend of Brenda’s? I didn’t quite catch your name? Tracey?’
‘Casey. Casey Mullins. It’s a bit complicated, but I sort of knew Jock.’
Pippa’s long eyelashes fluttered in a bewildered sort of way. ‘Oh, really.’
Harrison frowned. ‘I thought you said…’
Casey smiled demurely and removed her glasses. ‘Actually I think you jumped to a couple of conclusions. But thanks anyway for sorting out that confusion with the policeman.’
Pippa had taken a step back. Rather stiffly she said, ‘Well, anyway, we ought to introduce ourselves properly. I’m Philippa Harrison and this is my husband Tom.’
‘Major, is that right?’ Casey asked.
He nodded.
‘You’re not in uniform.’
‘No, I’m not with the pallbearers or in the guard of honour. We don’t wear uniforms off duty nowadays.’
‘I see.’ Ś 1 ‘Best not to advertise to terrorists.’
‘That’s awful,’ Casey said. ‘And how long had you known Jock?’
‘A long time. He was the best man at our wedding. Served with me in 321 EOD.’
‘Pardon me?’
He smiled at the very American intonation. ‘Explosives Ordnance Disposal Squadron in Northern Ireland.’
‘You’re a bomb man, too?’
Pippa looked pained, but Harrison just laughed lightly. ‘We’re called ATOs. Ammunition Technical Officers.’
‘That makes it sound very dull.’
His wife began to feel excluded, so she placed her hands on her son’s shoulders and propelled him forward. ‘This is our offspring, Archie. Say hello to Miss Mullins.’
He offered his hand shyly and bowed stiffly at the waist. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Mullins.’
She smiled at his Victorian formality and impeccable manners. ‘And I’m very pleased to meet you too, Archie. But please call me Casey and we’ll get on fine. How old are you?’
‘I’m ten. Nearly eleven.’
‘And tell me, do you intend to be a bomb man when you grow up, like your daddy?’
‘Over my dead body,’ Pippa intervened. ‘It’s bad enough with one of them in the family.’
Again Casey felt an unreasonable irritation at Philippa Harrison’s manner. Ignoring her, she said; ‘And what do you think, Archie?’
He glanced sideways at his mother. ‘Actually, I think I might like to, but I’m not sure I’d be brave enough.’
Casey couldn’t help herself, she laughed brightly and loudly enough to prompt several heads to turn. ‘How sweet! Oh, Archie, I’m sure you’d be quite brave enough.’
And while Pippa scowled, Casey noticed that his father gave his son a tight, proud {nig around his small shoulders.
It was then that Brenda Murray extricated herself from the gathering of mourners and approached them. She had dark features like Pippa, although she was considerably taller and the ringlets of hair beneath her hat were distinctly grey.
‘Pippa — Tom — little Archie — I’m so glad you could come.’ Her accent was so heavily Glaswegian that even Casey had no trouble in placing it. Through the veil she could see that Jock’s widow had a wide and generous mouth, managing to smile despite the sad look in her eyes.
‘We’re so, so sorry, Brenda,’ Pippa said as the two women embraced and exchanged kisses on the cheek.
Brenda nodded, clearly finding it difficult to talk beyond perfunctory greetings.
Harrison said: ‘This is Casey Mullins. I believe she was a friend of Jock’s.’
She looked towards the tall American, an expression of puzzlement on her face as she extended her hand.
Casey felt her cheeks colour. ‘This suddenly seems like a great impertinence, Mrs Murray. I had no idea it would be so — so busy.’ She gestured vaguely at the sizeable gathering and the pressmen beyond the gate. ‘I just wanted to sit quietly at the back of the church and pay my respects.’
‘How did you know Jock?’
‘Well, I didn’t really. My daughter and I were caught in Seven Dials on the day of the bombing. Your husband came and spoke to us, reassured us. I was very grateful. We were right next to the car, you see.’ .
Brenda Murray’s features seemed to freeze for a moment. Then she reached out for Casey’s arm. ‘My dear, you were actually there when it went off?’
Casey nodded, not sure what else to say.
‘Then you were probably the last person to see Jock alive.’
She found her voice. ‘He was very kind.’
Brenda noticed the wreath. ‘And you’ve brought this — I’ll put it with the others. Silly really, but Jock used to get terrible hayfever from flowers.’ Her voice quavered for a second, then she regained her composure. ‘It was good of you to come. But you won’t know anyone. Perhaps Pippa and Tom will be kind enough to look after you.’
‘Of course,’ Harrison said.
‘ ‘We’d best go in now,’ Brenda said, adding: ‘Do come back to the house afterwards, Miss Mullins. It’s just sherry and a few snacks.’
Then she was gone and Casey stayed with the Harrisons, joining the end of the queue of mourners as they were swallowed up into the 17th-century church.
Despite Brenda’s warm reception, Casey couldn’t help feeling like an intruder. A gatecrasher into others’ very private grief. For it became clear that this was a family in more than the usual sense of the word.
Almost all the men in the packed church were bound together in the brotherhood of the bomb. Harrison seemed to be known to almost all of them. It marked them out as men apart, men who alone knew what it meant to take the long walk that Jock Murray had taken. Theirs was an elite, a closed order in which it was not possible for the outside world to share, let alone begin to understand. Their work, their language and their jargon and their secret world of private fears were scarcely understood even by fellow soldiers and policemen. So how could someone like Casey begin to comprehend? Men from the British Army and the Explosives Section of New Scotland Yard stood shoulder to shoulder, heads bent in silent prayer. For Jock and his family, she wondered, or for themselves the next time a bomb warning was received?
And the women, too, were set apart. Who but they would know what it meant to be the wife or lover of a bomb-disposal man? Their private, silently screaming agony whenever they saw a newsflash on the television. Did they hush the kids and turn up the sound? Or did they look away and pretend that the real sordid world didn’t exist? Did they just say Daddy will be home this weekend and leave it at that? A bomb in Northern Ireland or an explosion in the West End. What did it mean to them? All the time knowing that of all the places in all the world, that was exactly where their men were expected to be.
The service lasted half-an-hour; the lesson was read by a man called Les Appleyard, who Harrison explained had been Jock’s closest friend, and a tribute was paid by a Yorkshireman called Midgely from the Explosives Section. He told the congregation that he was standing in for his chief who’d been delayed in London because of the current terrorist campaign.
Apparently at Jock’s own request, when he was still very much alive and full of mischief, it concluded with the melancholy lament of a kilted piper.
There was a burning sensation in Casey’s throat and her eyes were stinging as the pallbearers, police officers to which the Explosives Section was attached, stepped forward and manhandled the coffin onto their shoulders. Brenda Murray with her children fell in behind the silent procession, Jock’s former colleagues, seniorpolice and army officers following. Casey joined the Harrisons at the rear, passing the guard of honour formed by policemen and men in the white belts and peaked caps of the Royal Logistics Corps, on the way to the churchyard where the freshly dug grave waited.