Never a Hero to Me by Tracy Black

other men even said hello. I could hear all the noise from the rest of the pub, but it was as if everything was silent at that table. After what seemed like ages, he took his coat from the back of the chair and said, ‘Right, let’s go.’
    All of the men got up and put their jackets on too. They shook hands with each other, and no one was missed out. There were no slaps on the back, no camaraderie. Dad pushed me back towards the door and we walked home in silence. It was very peculiar. When I told a friend about this as an adult, she asked whether my dad had been in the Masons. I have considered that, but, if he was, he never mentioned it, nor did he ever seem to go to meetings, wear Masonic regalia, or even have anything good going on in his life which might have suggested he knew people in the right places.
    No, the real reason was, I believe, much more sinister.
    He was showing me to other men who had the same depraved needs as he did.
    I’m not imagining that, and what happened on other occasions adds more evidence to my understanding of the situation. Every time I saw Dad with these friends, every time I went to the taproom for him, they were the same people. They sat away from everyone else; no other soldiers approached their table. There were no laughs; there was no sense of fun. They kept their voices down and they always had that formal approach to each member of their group.
    The weekend after I met him in the halfway house for the first time, he had to work on the Saturday morning. This often happened. On this occasion, he woke me up early. ‘Get up and get dressed,’ he snapped. ‘You’re coming to work with me.’ I did as I was told. As we walked to his office, the only conversation we had was when he told me how to behave.
    ‘If anyone comes in, keep quiet. Speak if you’re spoken to, but keep it short and sweet,’ he instructed.
    There was a steady stream of other personnel coming in, and I didn’t have any concerns about any of them. They were friendly to me and most of them would say, ‘Who’s this you’ve got in with you today then?’ Dad wouldn’t elaborate at all. He’d simply say, ‘My daughter, Tracy,’ and answer their question or give them what they needed. I’d smile shyly, but say nothing, wary of how he had told me to behave. Quite often, other clerks would come in, and they were all nice to me. There was, again, a lot of respect shown to him. No one was there for small chat exactly, but he would just coldly give them what they needed and hurry them out.
    Until one man came in. I thought I recognised him from the halfway house, but I couldn’t be sure, given that no one really engaged with me there either. He didn’t ask who I was, but my dad said to him immediately, ‘This is Tracy.’
    The man nodded.
    All I remember is that they said a few inconsequential things to each other, along the lines of ‘everything all right?’ and comments like that.
    Nothing else happened that day, and I went with my dad for a few weekends after that and the same things happened. He stopped working on Saturdays and Sundays after a while, and started to go on exercise instead. Exercises were compulsory and happened at least twice a year. The men would go away from their families. All or most of the camp would go, usually for a week or two, and at least once a year they had a long one which lasted between four and six weeks. Dad was exempt from most of these because of Mum’s illness but at times he seemed to opt back in – I think he didn’t like them because of his laziness more than anything, and I suspect he was shown up by the real soldiers when he went on them. I was surprised when he started going on them. After a few weeks, he told me that help was needed in the kitchen and that he’d volunteered me. I was still too young for that sort of thing really, but as I’d been doing so much around the house for so many years now, it didn’t surprise me.
    When we got there, he didn’t go