Something to Declare by Cyclist

Chapter 50

And so a car park and a recreation ground filled with dancing couples, couples of all sorts and shapes.

I even saw two of the Marines dancing together, and the band played, and food was shared, tea and juice flowed. There was laughter, and music, and squeals from those caught out in the baskets. One picnic table was covered in extreme examples of the shoemaker’s art while their owners danced barefoot on the grass, and the old bugler jammed along with the ceilidh band as well as his instrument allowed, until the double bassoon player handed him a trumpet and he let rip properly.

There were two film crews, and reporters doing bits to camera, but I answered every attempt at an interview with a warning that I would not prejudice the upcoming trial of her killers, for that was how I saw them.

As I rested from Waves of Tory with a cuppa, I noticed Sgt McDuff talking to a young couple with a child, whom I had seen at the rear of the church, and realised he kept indicating me. He caught my eye, and raised an eyebrow in a quizzical way, and I nodded. He brought them over.

“Hi, I’m Stewart” he offered with his hand. I shook it warmly; this was a good man, I felt.

“Steph”

“You arranged all this?”

“With Sally, and Jerry, and my family, plus a few friends and neighbours”

“I’d like to thank you, then. Nobody knew where Mike had gone, and it was only by chance we caught the news about this. With more time, I would have arranged a proper military send-off for him, but this is more than adequate. Thank you for all you have done”

“Her. It was ‘her’ “

He looked down. After a pause, he murmured

“Yes. You are right, but please remember what memories I have of…Melanie. It is difficult to change gear quite as quickly as you would like me to, but I promise I will try. Practicalities…have you arranged a headstone?”

“Not yet, it needs some thought. We have to get just the right words.”

“Well, I will be having a word with the Benevolent Fund. Once a Marine….can I please have a contact number for those who knew her, so we can find those right words together?”

He kept looking away.

“What is up?”

“It’s just a Marine thing. I need to kill four men.”

He drew a deep breath.

“Don’t worry, we will let the law take its course, but we will be at the trial and we will be in uniform, and those turds will know whom they have offended, and even if they never meet some future accident, they will be looking over their shoulders till the day they fucking die, Trust me on that”

Two more Marines had joined us, and as they nodded in agreement I realised that I was indeed looking into the eyes of killers. Something awaited Billy and Alfie and the others, and even if t was not a cliché of vigilante retribution, that fear would haunt them for the rest of their lives. I did not envy them.

The young couple, the woman very pregnant, was standing by with a little girl, perhaps five years old. Sgt McDuff waved them over.

“This is another Melanie, and her husband Darren, and the little one is Ashley, if I remember your name right, darling”

Clinging to her mother’s hand, the tiny girl nodded and asked “Are you the lady what played the nice music?”

I bent down to smile at her. “Yes, love, I am. And who are you?”

The woman blushed, and said “Melanie Stevens’ great niece. I’m her brother’s daughter.”

I felt the anger rise. “And where were you when she needed you? When Sally rang to pass the news, what was it you said? ‘Who?’ Why are you here now? She had nothing to leave to you, no money, no house”

Melanie 2 burst into tears, Ashley hugging her legs and howling at her mother’s distress. Darren cleared his throat.

“Blame my in-laws, her grandparents, her dad. They kept all of this from us, we are just like Stewart here, we only found our by chance. “

“So where are they now?”

“My wife’s grandparents are at home, and we will not be going there again. I think her dad’s probably in casualty at the moment”

He showed me the knuckles of his right hand, scabbed with dried blood, and continued.

“My wife’s name was his, her suggestion when she was born, and now we understand why. Please believe we have been kept from contact with her for so long, we had no idea what was happening. If we had….my wife loved her Uncle Mike, and love should not be negotiable. It either is or it isn’t.”
I hugged him, and then Melanie, and as I said sorry to Ashley Sally joined us, glowing from the dance. I made the introductions, and left them to share their loss. I needed my own man for my own comfort. I had just found three more people to hate, and that was not how I wanted to feel on a day like this. I wanted to dance.

That evening, when all was said, and done, and the promises of continuing contact and support exchanged, the family sat in the Woods’ front room to watch the news report. There were several interviews; I had declined, but Simon was clear in his message about tolerance and shared humanity, Jerry in condemnation of prejudice and hope that police action would be proportionate and not cursory, that it wouldn’t be buried as “just another pervert getting a slapping”

Then Stewart McDuff gave a brief account of Mike/Melanie’s service life. It was rather clever; in a speech devoid of any obvious threat, he left no doubt in my mind that the safest course of action for our friends would be a new life in, say, North Korea.

We had invited the Grahams, Darren, Melanie and Ashley, that is, as well as Stewart, back to the houses, and Stewart had produced a bottle of Pusser’s Rum for a toast, which led Albert to dig out his malt collection, and I sent Bill and Geoff to the off licence for some ales, as Big Bill pleaded for some fruit juice and Angela harrumphed about a nice cup of tea. Jan, Naomi, Kelly and I hit the supermarket and cornered the world market in finger food, just in time to return to the kitchen for a bit of a surprise. Naomi had stopped at the back door, and holding a finger to her lips she waved us quietly forward. Through the open window we could see one Marine, and one shrink, and one rather close embrace.

It seemed that life was moving on rather quickly for two of us!

It wasn’t us that broke the mood, but Ashley, who suddenly appeared n the kitchen door, and we could hear her squeal through the open window.

“Wotchoo doin’?”