The Glory Boys

McCoy lay on his side across the front seats, head just beneath the steering wheel. Famy was curled up in the back, his coat off and covering his shoulders. The car was parked deep in a grassy clearing, far from the road and visible through the high summer foliage only to someone who approached to within a few yards of it. There were many such places in the line of Surrey hills between Guildford and Dorking that block the route to London.

Later they would become a haven for Sunday walkers and picnickers, but in the early morning the two men had the clearing to themselves.

'We must sleep now, any time we bloody-well can get it,' McCoy had said.

They missed the breaking of the dawn, when the darkness gave way to the half-light, and then the sun began to cast its shortening shadows across the grass. They didn't see the rabbits that came to eat and preen themselves, or the fox that hastened them back to their burrows. It was the noise of children that aroused them. Two boys, little more than ten years old, faces pressed against the steamed-up windows of the car, peering in at them, and running giggling away as McCoy started up from his sleep. He swore inaudibly, and tried to collect his thoughts as he gazed around him. There is always that moment immediately after waking before the bad news of the previous night is remembered. McCoy couldn't immediately place why he was in the car. It came to him soon enough, and with the realization came the memory of the events of five hours earlier.

He shook Famy. 'Come on, lover-boy. Time to be on our way.'

'What's happening? Where are we?' Famy too had woken confused.

'Out in the countryside, taking in the sunshine.

Remember?'

Famy inclined his head slowly, deliberately, understanding.

Neither saw the two boys who lay in the thick grass bracken watching the men as they rubbed their eyes and stretched and pawed at the grass, throwing out the stiffness that had accompanied their awkward, limb-twisted sleep.

McCoy beckoned with his hand, an abrupt gesture, and the two began to walk the length of the clearing to the path that meandered away among the pine trees and the birches and the undergrowth. it's a fair walk, and I don't want to hang about,' said McCoy over his shoulder as he led the way. Neither wore the shoes for the country paths, and both slipped and stumbled where the rain had made the surface muddy.

They walked in silence for more than twenty minutes.

Then Famy noticed that McCoy was slowing down his stride, searching for a sign. When he found it he stood still, pleased with himself, beside an old, rusted-up pram chassis.

'That's the first marker,' he said, it's easy enough from here to find the place. We go fifty paces now down the path. Measure them out, and we'll be just about there.'

Famy let the distance between them grow as McCoy, his step accentuated by the care he was taking, marked out the distance.

'At home,' said McCoy when he had counted up to fifty out loud, 'we have to hide our guns. We keep them out in the countryside, but somewhere you can get them night or day, so you need markers, so you can find them on a path in the dark. Has to be straightforward and obvious to the man on the pick-up, but giving nothing away to the Brits.

Now look, and what's the most prominent tree close to us? Has to be the one with the ivy up it, easy to see, would show up by torch. That's the main marker. Now we have to look for something else that's off the path but equally clear… stands out just as much. You walk round the tree, trying to line it up with something that stands out.

Right? If you draw a line between this tree, and the big one, over there, the one the lightning hit, you go on and into the bank. There are rabbits' holes all the way down and along the bank. Well, what we're looking for is the hole in the straight line beyond the two trees.'

He walked forward past the ivy-coated branches, past the dead tree. 'The Brits are too bloody impatient to work it out like this. But once there was a chap on the television, and his men called him "Sniffer". He found more of our guns than any other soldier in the province. And what did the buggers do with him? Sent him first to the Tower of London on guard duty, then packed him off to Cyprus for nine months.'

McCoy was still laughing as his hands sunk into the rabbit hole. Famy watched fascinated as they emerged again clutching the whitened plastic of a farm bag.

'I had to dig the hole out a bit,' McCoy said. 'But who's going to notice fresh earth at a rabbit burrow?'