Road Undermined by Badgers, and Other Short Stories Read online

Revenge is Green

  He was sliding deeper and deeper into the glutinous morass.

  There were no handholds to escape the slurry dragging him down into oily oblivion.

  Major Hardy expected his life to flash before him at any second. The soldier had hoped to put off that evil moment with all its gory details peppered with so many regrets. Then the sound of a woman’s voice reminded him of his greatest mistake of all - passing up domestic bliss for the sake of a uniform he could easily despise with the benefit of hindsight. Of what use was his extraordinary military experience now he was about to be suffocated in fracking waste?

  A hand suddenly grabbed his and, without letting him slide from its grip, he was hauled back up to solid ground. The woman’s reassuring voice was like the mewing of a concerned cat’s as she pulled him from the oily quicksand. But the tone was deeper and much firmer than that of his recalled lost love, more tiger than kitten.

  The only thing Major Hardy could now be sure of was that the ragtag group of eco-protesters she belonged to were not terrorists. They were just a motley collection from every level of society with banners and dress sense to match. None of them were armed, let alone wearing explosive vests.

  The dazed and breathless soldier’s first sensible thought was relief that he had decided to reason with them before the civil authorities stepped in. He also shared their view that the oil plant was uncomfortably near the perimeter of the base he commanded. He just wished that he had not mistaken the demonstrators’ waving to warn him away from the firm looking crust on the pit of mud deposited by the drilling company as part of their protest.

  Major Hardy pulled out his mobile phone only to find that had not survived being buried in the oily slurry. Someone thrust a smartphone into his hand so he could contact his unit to reassure them that he was safe. It was a quick call; the truth was too embarrassing for elucidation. The Major was a man with a severe reputation, dreaded by those in his command who did not meet his uncompromising standards on the parade ground, and it was bad enough they would see his uniform coated in evil-smelling black oil and close-cropped hair looking like a tarred hedgehog.

  The woman who had risked being sucked down into the oil waste to rescue him had fared no better. She was his age - mid-forties - but dressed like a sixties beatnik and slightly taller. Despite this, the soldier felt an embarrassing pang of attraction to this willow-like woman, and not only because she had just saved him from suffocating oblivion.

  He dare not show it. A tough man with the responsibility of life and death over a 120 soldiers could not be seen giving into romantic impulses, whether by his own men or this gathering of latter-day hippies.

  The slender woman pushed a mug of something warm and comforting into his hands and her expression betrayed that the attraction was mutual. As their gazes met, cherubim should have sang in jubilation. Instead there was the screech of a badly-driven four-by-four ambulance slamming on its brakes.

  The owner of the smartphone that had summoned assistance was still busily wiping away the oily fingerprints from it as an army doctor and a lieutenant sprang out of the vehicle to dash towards them.

  Major Hardy’s subordinate suppressed any reaction to his superior’s dishevelled condition that he would later regret.

  The doctor had no such qualms.

  ‘My God, Major, looks as though you’ve been swimming though an oil slick. Let’s make sure the sharks didn’t take a bite out of you. Undo his uniform,’ he ordered the unfortunate lieutenant. The doctor took out his stethoscope and listened to the patient’s heart. ‘Well the ticker sounds fine, but then I wouldn’t expect it to be anything else. I’ll take the blood pressure once we’ve got that uniform off.’ The doctor’s antique blood pressure monitor was not going to be contaminated by any noxious substances, even for the welfare of a senior officer. His patient had the constitution of an ox anyway and could survive anything, which was more could be said for the tall, dark woman next to him who had started to cough uncontrollably. ‘And you had better come along as well.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Maddy managed to gasp, the reassuring purr now replaced by uncontrollable wheezing.

  ‘No you’re not. You’re asthmatic, probably diabetic, and need a thorough check-up.’

  Major Hardy fought back the urge to put a comforting arm around her. ‘Don’t argue. This man is never wrong. It’s the only reason I put up with him.’

  ‘Well that’s sorted then.’ The doctor wiped his stethoscope and tossed it into his bag. He turned to the lieutenant and a couple of the eco-protestors. ‘You’d better help them back to base. I know one of them certainly won’t get on a stretcher, and I’m not going to miss my game of golf to clean up that ambulance yet again.’ He returned to the vehicle with a bounce in his stride that wasn’t natural for a man in his mid 60s and drove off.

  ‘He should have been pensioned off years ago,’ Major Hardy explained, ‘but his wife prefers we keep him.’

  Unsure whether she would live down saving the life of a senior army officer, Maddy meekly allowed herself to be escorted into the barrack’s medical centre where a female attendant checked her over, washed the oily residue from her hair and places she would have never allowed a male orderly to go, and procured a reasonable change of clothes. Maddy’s much-loved, patchwork velvet dress seemed beyond help, and it would take several shampoos before her frizzy hair recovered from the experience.

  The next time Maddy met Major Hardy he was in an immaculate dress uniform and she wore a smart white blouse and short, though sensible, skirt (on a smaller woman it would have been regulation length). Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought they were well-matched, but the choir of cherubim were still holding their breath while Heaven made up its mind.

  The declaration of gratitude from a self-confident man for being rescued from the pit of oily oblivion was heartfelt, albeit somewhat hesitant at never having had to utter those words before. Major Hardy was usually the one who saved other people. He had a drawer full of medals to prove it. Maddy just hoped that she wouldn’t be offered an embarrassing award for doing something that was simply in her nature and, being diabetic, chocolates were also out. She doubted that he would have understood why she rejected any official recognition, and was grateful the matter was not broached. It was easier to politely accept his offer of dinner at a ridiculously expensive restaurant to avoid the awkwardness of refusing. And, though she fought to ignore it, there was something intriguing about this unsmiling man with the firm jaw and steel-grey eyes. She was also curious to know what he would look like out of uniform - in a civilian suit of course, though she wouldn’t have discounted taking the thought further at a later date.

  Maddy’s main problem now became what to wear in such elite surroundings without embarrassing the man. Her wardrobe was a rail of exotic garments sent from odd corners of the world by family and well-wishers. The sarongs from the Far East were stunning, but not for up-market dining venues, and the floral silk dresses sent by her aunt in the Barbados, who still thought she was fifteen, were not right for someone her age and height. Her friend Sylvia had a very smart suit, which had only been worn once for her daughter’s wedding. The fellow campaigner was much shorter, but the calf-length skirt would at least reach Maddy’s knees.

  The elegant surroundings of the rooftop restaurant patio were not the eco-campaigner’s natural habitat, though they did have a commendable vegan menu. To her surprise, Major Hardy opted for a vegetarian platter, and obviously not to impress her. The tone of the man’s fair skin and general fitness also suggested that he did not smoke or drink. Most of the men under his command might not have survived being sucked down into an oily morass quite so easily.

  Conversation began awkwardly. It was limited to the activities of her eco-aware companions who had no secrets because it helped to have their agenda well advertised. The only reason they could have been mistaken for radical activists was that a more hard-core group had been reported in the area. Maddy and her compani
ons were well aware of their extreme protests and steered clear of them. Their death-defying stunts held up traffic, cost local councils money to clear up, and risked alienating the general public against the cause they both strived to advance. They were the reason any activity so close to an army base had to be immediately dealt with.

  All through the one-sided conversation the Major regarded Maddy with a half-smile that softened his stern expression. She wasn’t sure whether it was because he found her amusing or he was just bored. At least it wasn’t like the indulgent ones her religious family wore whenever she rattled on about rising sea levels, major extinctions and the climate change humans were inflicting on their God’s creation.

  After telling him so much, Maddy felt entitled to ask the very question he would probably refuse to answer. ‘Don’t you have anyone who is going to wonder why you are taking this strange, black woman out to dinner?’

  ‘I doubt that my lieutenant would be jealous. He’s already in a full-time relationship and certainly doesn’t fancy me.’

  Major Hardy gay? He had to be pulling her leg.

  ‘I meant...’

  The soldier was indebted to this woman for pulling him from oily suffocation and she deserved an honest answer that would also let her know that he was not romantically attached. ‘There was someone a long while ago. Like you, she had a social conscience. She was a Quaker, and the idea of marrying a man liable to go to war was out of the question. She married a chemist instead. Now, I wouldn’t have thought twice about sacrificing the uniform for her.’

  ‘And you wish you had back then?’

  ‘I wish I had made many different decisions, but hindsight is pointless.’

  ‘Never look back?’

  ‘Never look back unless you want to confront demons.’

  Maddy was willing to believe that this taciturn man had plenty of them in his closet. It made him all the more fascinating.

  Had commonsense prevailed, the evening would have ended there with a polite handshake, but these two very down to earth people could not resist that inconvenient magnetism which draws individuals closer against their better judgement. When Nature decides that opposites attract, she will not be ignored.

  There was another assignation; this time more secret. Comrades on both sides would have relished gossiping about the unlikely liaison between the man of steel and woman of social conscience.

  So Maddy and the Major grew closer and closer until it could be kept secret no longer.

  Her companions registered amazement to mild disapproval. Though Sylvia, the eternal romantic, thought her friend should be congratulated, if only for managing to infiltrate the enemy camp.

  Major Hardy’s men dared say nothing within earshot, so he found that being unable to lip-read was somewhat of a relief.

  While Maddy’s determination to save the planet was not diminished by her liaison with a soldier, the Major’s worldview began to widen. That deep-rooted commitment to duty and chain of command had already started to weaken before meeting her. Maddy was the breath of fresh air that allowed this expert in munitions and undercover sabotage to review his dedication to warfare in a way his Quaker love had not. For appearance’s sake he remained the same stiff, unbending martinet to his troops, humiliating anyone improperly dressed and pretending that he was unaware his lieutenant kept a lilac suit in his locker for dates with his boyfriend. Because the Major’s girlfriend had such a relaxed attitude to her hippy appearance, his men wondered how he allowed Maddy to get away with it, not to mention the fact that she and her companions still organised protests so near the boundary of his command. But Major Hardy’s love for her transcended his obsession with neatness, social order and military obligation. As far as he was concerned, however much it went against the grain, she was perfect, even when trying to wheedle him over to her point of view.

  He only began to worry when Maddy casually mentioned that the eco-extremists had set up a base in a decommissioned coal-fired power station. Waving banners and shouting protests was one thing, but Maddy had the determination to look a crocodile in the teeth and persuade it to become a vegetarian.

  There was no point in asking her what she intended to do. Her reaction would be a shrug of the shoulders and innocent smile. To Maddy, the survival of the world depended on her eco-aware companions getting their message over, and the last thing they needed was a few extremists undermining it with direct action that annoyed the public and wasted police time. Her group were proud of the fact they had never seen the inside of a magistrate’s court.

  Major Hardy did not mention the matter again and allowed their relationship to carry on at its comfortable pace.

  Maddy was introduced to his mother, who had been something of a renegade in her past. She immediately approved of her forthright view of the world, if not her politics. His son’s girlfriend was a better choice than that of the wan Quaker girl who probably would have reduced him to a sensible, boring, human being who put the needs of everyone else before his own. His mother was not an unreasonable woman, but had been determined her son would not become like his father who, she believed, died of a stroke as a consequence of trying to put the world to rights. So Mrs Hardy persuaded her only child to join the army, with little inkling that it would change her loving, innocent boy into a man she barely knew. As soon as he put on that uniform the charismatic smile, love of animals and Sunday afternoon games of cricket came to an end, and the obsession with weaponry and battlefield tactics took over. Mrs Hardy dreaded to think what he had been obliged to do in his many undercover operations, blaming the army sooner than herself: some things a mother should never have to own up to. Hopefully Maddy would snap him out of his mindset before he became too old for it to make any difference. She would have liked to see that caring child once more before she died.

  Major Hardy soon became convinced that Maddy intended to try and reason with the eco extremists bunkered down in the redundant power station before they caused serious damage. As the only one prepared to jump into an oily pit to pull out a soldier about to disperse their demonstration, she wouldn’t think twice about confronting a ragtag group of people who had different ideas about how the world should be changed.

  When Maddy hired a car (she had long since given up owning one after reports that particles from traffic pollution killed people) he decided to follow her. The Major was good at tracking quarry, but as that quarry happened to be the love of his life it was with some trepidation.

  Karnbridge Power Station was one of those blots on the landscape Nature refused to recolonise. It was surrounded by slag piles and its towering walls, still intact, were like monolithic slate cliffs ruining an otherwise beautiful coastal view. The interior should have been sealed tight, but the company owning it had spent so much decommissioning the eyesore they had no intention of wasting any more to keep out the pigeons and idiots intent on doing themselves serious injury. All the useful machinery had been removed, and dismantling the massive turbines would have incurred more expense. Not even a government who paid lip service to environmentalists without listening to a word they said would have dared bring this coal-fired power monolith back online.

  There was no sign of Maddy’s hired mini, though a black four-by-four was parked by the half open gates guarded by a man in a balaclava and combat gear. The Major instantly knew that he was no eco-activist. The sentry held his automatic weapon like a professional. Perhaps Maddy had realised at the last moment that it was unlikely the protesters had set up a base in this gutted eyesore when they could do all their plotting in the basement of one of their rundown squats, and promptly driven off.

  The guard’s companions must have been inside. God forbid that Maddy was also in there advocating moral responsibility. The Major may not have known much about ecology, but he understood the mentality of men who carried weapons. Attempting to reason with them was not a good idea.

  He was thankful to be carrying a side arm; he could hardly call for support before knowing what was
going on. If Maddy was inside, under the impression she was confronting other people who supported the same cause, he would be her only hope.

  The Major distracted the guard by hurling a stone at the perimeter fence and darted past to enter the corridor that had once been the power station’s admin centre. The place should have been cleared of all furniture and files, yet several rooms were occupied. Two of the larger ones appeared to be a makeshift dormitory and the largest of all contained chairs, monitors and tables. Whoever they belonged to, they certainly weren’t preparing to generate power for the National Grid.

  In another room there was a rack of automatic rifles, which confirmed his worst suspicions. Major Hardy snatched the nearest loaded weapon and swiftly doubled back along the corridor into the hall housing the massive turbines. The thought that Maddy had walked in on these individuals made it difficult to focus.

  There was no sign of anyone, so he noiselessly searched the vast turbine hall, still in the hope Maddy had already left.