The Assassin and the Principal

"Oh, say, I didn't expect to see you here!"

This statement was made in a shop along Strand Street in Bray, Ireland, by one old-middle-aged man to another.

He continued: "The festivities are expected to start about seven. Plenty of light here in the summer."

The other old-middle-aged man had no idea what the first man was talking about. There must have been some kind of mistake, but he smiled as if he understood, because too much attention ruins missions.

You see, the other old-middle-aged man, the one worrying about ruined missions, was, in fact, an assassin.

Late on the previous night, he'd gotten onto the ferry from Liverpool to Dublin, and thence by train from Dublin to Bray, arriving in the town at six in the morning.

Amidst the bustle of early-risers at the Strand Hotel, the assassin went to the front desk and said he'd like to check in.

The perky woman behind the front desk said: "Oh, no, you're much too early. Check-in isn't til three."

The assassin explained he'd had a room booked for the previous night, too, but that unexpected business had made him incredibly late, ten hours, in fact. He told her to look for his false name in the register, and lo and behold yes, faith, the room was his to be had immediately.

She turned the book around and the assassin wrote his false name down in the book, told her convivially that he was tired and didn't want to be disturbed before two. She nodded, then her attention was pulled to a couple from Leeds who were anxious to check out, and thus she forgot everything about Mr False Name.

Up in his small room, which had been designed for a single person or a beast with two backs, the assassin studied again the documents concerning his target. There were scant details saving name and occupation, and a note concerning the forthcoming evening's engagement at which the principal (for his target was a school principal) could be easily and silently dispatched. Holding his traveller's map, he went to the window which looked out upon the Irish Sea and tried to orient himself. To his right was the mountain called Bray Head, while to his left was the direction he'd come from, from the train station. Earlier, when he'd been walking along Strand Street, he'd noted a pavilion jutting out into the sea, a pavilion which had fallen into something of disrepair, seldom profitable, and paint-peeling. It was the place in which he knew he would be operating (and assassinating) that night.

He lay down on the hard bed to sleep, and he allowed his mind to drift. He'd been to a town like this before; as a matter of fact, his family had lived in just such a town once; but, really, he'd grown up all over Europe, since his father, an RAF officer with sought skills, had been sent from base-to-base some three dozen times. The assassin only came 'to ground' when he'd turned eighteen, to quietly settle in Manchester. The profession chose him (not he it) because he knew, generically speaking, towns and cities and their inherent properties. He knew how to buy anything without being noticed; he knew which people to avoid and which to trust (to an extent). In his mind's eye he recreated the photograph he'd seen of the principal, with his distinguishing characteristics highlighted as if with a yellow marker. He didn't anticipate any problems.

Before he knew it, it was early afternoon, and he knew he had to occupy his time in solitude for more than a few hours. He couldn't sit at the window, at least not with peace of mind. He'd lost such interest in the book he was reading that he looked upon the idea with aversion. Perhaps there was good movie on some streaming service, signed in as 'guest'. Yes, but he was hungry, and take-away seemed best, in some place in the upper town, away from the sea, and never to be visited again.

He knew there would be a back exit and, since it was a very small town, the door would be an exit but not an entrance. He found said door, sighted the high street, two blocks up, and he proceeded uphill. Fish and chips seemed the most inconspicuous foodstuffs, so he went into the first take-away fish shop he saw.

He was waiting for his order of fish and chips and two bottles of Smithwick's when the strange man got his attention to make the weird statement--Oh, say, I didn't expect to see you here!--to which the assassin made no response. The man knocked the assassin in the shoulder with his fist, adding: "Well, time to prime!" The assassin noticed the other man had a six-pack of Guiness under his arm. The assassin pretended to know the strange man, said: "Yes, see you later." The strange man left the shop. The assassin quickly plunked down three five-euro bills and didn't wait for the change.

He forced himself to walk leisurely down the hill and back to the Strand Hotel. He was fortunate in that the perky woman wasn't at the front desk. Purposefully he hurried up to his room, set his lunch down on a nearby table, and locked the door completely.

It was a case of mistaken identity, of course. It happens. Sometimes even the assassin himself saw people who resembled his own self. He forced himself to concentrate on the job at hand. Ignoring the food and drink for a bit, he pulled out the map again, and scanned it. His eye slipped a little up, beyond the pavilion, and he saw a little site marker. It marked the location of Ravenswell Primary School. Something triggered in his mind, and he chased after it. There were ravens, and there was a well. How did they fit together? He pictured a well, with two ravens sitting on it, with their legs crossed, and smiling at him.

He pulled out the paragraph-length dossier on his potential victim, and he saw the phrase "Principal - Ravenswell". He thus knew why he'd been taken aback. Why would it be necessary to assassinate the principal of a primary school? The assassin didn't know, and didn't want to know. He was a professional, and professionals are disinterested as to their tasks.

But still--he had a nagging feeling that the word Ravenswell meant more than just the place from which his potential victim emerged, ringing bells, yelling "Boys! Girls!", and sometimes administering corporal punishment. The assassin felt something vague.

He tried to remember what he'd been like as a boy, shunted from city-to-town-to-base, picking up some temporary schooling hither-and-yon, and he almost convinced himself that he himself had been in this town fifty-or-so years before. It was somewhat possible.

He ate his fish-and-chips lunch, fish probably being straight out of the Irish Sea, turned on the telly and watched three funny episodes of the Sopranos on Netflix. It turned to five o'clock, and he felt it was time to dress up like a tourist--albeit a tourist with a garotte--and saunter slowly over towards the pavilion, taking in both the out-of-the-way places and noticing where people noisily congregated.

He went out the front way. He waved to the man at the front desk as he left, because that's what a good tourist would do. Then he was out on Strand Street, with the hot sun overhead.

Children, plenty of children, down at the water's edge, with buckets and balls. A notable Chinese family was at a picnic table, eating from a big tray of chips. Bicycles passed him on occasion, sometimes a scooter, rented, of course. He turned around to look at the mountainous Bray Head, and too bad he'd never make its ascent. The pavilion was getting closer, and he saw there was a banner hanging from its entranceway, reading 50TH REUNION, and there was a picture under it, of two smiling ravens sitting, with their legs crossed, on a well. Odd. The current principal he was to eliminate had something to do with it, in some manner. Of course, the principal from fifty years ago must be long since dead, and why did the assassin think of that?

It was about six o'clock in the evening. The sun was still shining, about 45° very much to the west. He heard a child scream, and he turned to look. There was nothing to be seen, just the cry of a little girl being histrionic.

"David? Is that you, David?" came a voice from behind him, calling obviously to someone else. He glanced behind him, and he saw a sixty-year-old woman staring at him. "It is David, right? You are David Smithson, correct?"

The assassin had so seldom heard his real name spoken for somewhat thirty years that he barely recognized himself as the one to whom the question had been addressed. Perhaps this was one he couldn't get out of. A denial would be suspicious, quite. So, the assassin David Smithson said: "Yes, that's me, hello, haven't seen you in a while."

The woman beamed. She had black hair, she was two inches shorter than himself, and she was dressed fancily. She said: "My God, none of us ever expected you to show up."

The assassin David replied, "Oh, yes, I turn up in the funniest places, don't I?"

The woman put out her beaming hand. "Maybe you don't remember me, it's Gillian Cooper. Oh, but back then it was Thomson. Gillian Thomson."

"Gillian, yes, I remember, so good to see you." He was in Ireland, and he was supposed to kill someone. "Has it been a long time?"

Gillian, had put on a couple pounds, apparently, and she said: "God, yes! Ravenswell, fifty years. We haven't seen you since, and we've all missed you."

Poor David replied: "Oh, ah, yes, my dad had to move away. He had to do that a lot, RAF and all."

Gillian touched his right shoulder. "I think we'll all be glad to see you, especially ... but, you'll see."

Gillian walked off toward the pavilion, leaving assassin David for a moment alone. He found himself somehow known. Had he and his father and his mother found themselves living in Bray fifty years before? It wasn't impossible. David the assassin thought then that that was why the place seemed so familiar. And yet he had no real memory of it.

Gillian had been a bit tipsy. If, David thought: I have not much evidence either way. I have a mission, regardless of whatever they locals and whatever the students of Ravenswell school think.

Someone slapped him on the back. "David! We thought you'd never show!"

Assassin David disengaged himself from the Strand Street slap enough to see the slapper, who was a kind of a fatty gross splotchy drunkard. David said: "Yes, I was in the area, and so--"

"Good to see you here!"

The drunkard went off toward the pavilion.

At this point, David the assassin figured he had to re-figure his approach. It was apparent he was known, and he was known because he had lived in Bray fifty years before. He pulled himself back through the years, yes, in 1975, his father (and his wife and his son) were somewhere near Dublin, but not in Dublin. Then they all pulled up and went to Germany.

While he was ruminating so, he heard a female voice. "Couldn't keep away, could you?"

David looked--pretty red-head, though sixty--and said: "I guess not."

The red-head said, putting her finger to her nose acknowledgingly: "I think Margaret will want a word with you."

He was in it, but he didn't want to be in it. But there he was. He bucked himself up, no matter how the bizarre situation was, and, since ... whatever the situation was, he could turn it into an opportunity for the garrotting.

It was still only six-thirty. David the assassin took a bench and thought. Perhaps he had been in Bray fifty years before, and perhaps he had spent some time at Ravenswell school. But it couldn't have been for a long time, impossible.

And then he got patted on the back again. "Davey, we've been waiting for you for years, and now you show!"

David-assassin turned. The guy had a big white beard and he looked like a Tolkien figure or Kenny Rogers. "I was nearby, and so, here I am."

The Tolkien Rogers figure said: "Aye. I expect Margie wants a word." He winked, and proceeded on.

David looked at the pavilion. There was quite the crowd there already, even before this so-called blast-off was for seven. He caught his breath and calmed himself. As long as no other person came up behind him and slapped him on the back, things would go okay.

He got slapped on the back. A wren-like woman said to him: "Davey, you may not know that our school's current principal is now in the running for the Taoiseach, and though he's a Tory fuck, we love him anyway."

Davey nodded, said: "Only time will tell." Whoever it was went on to the pavilion.

It was time to hang back, and 'process' matters. Davey the assassin sat on the bench, which had been put there because their clientele was mostly elderly and all nostalgic about when they'd been there in the '70s, '80s, or even '90s. Dave knew his mission.

"Dave Smithson! Is that right?" said a passerby.

"Yes, I am who I am."

"Sorry!" The speaker was portly, and with a big moustache. Abashedly, he continued: "You're something of a legend around here."

"Why? How could that be?" The assassin was genuinely confused.

Moustache said: "I don't quite know. Legends are tricky things. You were only in our school for a week, but we all remember you."

And the assassin, Davey, sitting on a bench, in Bray, Ireland, with the Sea behind him, and the sun to the west, had occur to him something vestigial, a tweak of the mind, and the tweak said that he had lived in Bray, which was where he was at, for maybe five weeks, when he had been aged ten, and that he had some knowledge of Ravenswell school, for he had attended it for a week back in, oh, 1975.

The assassin said: "I remember it all, all you chaps."

Moustache beamed. "I expect we'll be having a right good party tonight! I expect Marge will want a word with you."

Moustache moved on, probably to the nearest bar. Assassin Davie weighed some probabilities. (He was there to murder the principal of Ravenswell.) His client (whoever it was, contacts being contracts) probably didn't know he would be caught up in a 50th-year reunion of those who were aged ten way back when. What was it with these guys, fifty years ago, to go on and on about the past? The assassin really didn't know.

After his sit. Time to find his victim. In the pavilion of 50TH REUNION, he went.

The place inside was very white. Festoons of balloons hung down. The music at that time and place was: "Waterloo." All his contemporaries, age-like, were bopping from foot to foot like they were teenagers. He tried to see some order in it all, because his mission was paramount. He had to find ... Daniel Baker, surveil him, being the current principal of Ravenswell school, in order to kill him.

An old lady came up to him. "By God, Dave, you're here! We've been waiting and waiting for you to come back to us."

The assassin said, genuinely: "What's so special about me?"

"I really don't know. You had a glow, that's all I can say. Come on, over here, you know her." The old lady pulled the assassin further into the pavilion.

"Look, it's Dave Smithson!" Some five girls, or women, looked at him, but there was one woman who caught his eye, if you know what I'm saying. That woman coughed into her little glass of pinot and said, coldly: "David. I'm glad to see you."

"I'm glad to see you too," said the assassin.

"Come with me," said the woman. She almost took his hand as she led him out to the seaward side, a kind of a balcony that surrounded the palladium.

They were then enfaced with the Irish Sea. Assassin Dave stood for a while beside the woman.

Finally, she said: "You act like you don't know. You don't know me, Margaret ... or how you got away from me. Why did you leave? I've not recovered, then or since. And today you turn up for a reunion, not a care, not a word, and you've forced me to relive fifty years of pain."

Assassin Dave was sympathetic, deeply. He didn't know who this woman was. She was practically crying. He quietly said: "I really had no idea."

She turned on him then. "I have grand-children now, and they are not yours. They could have been yours, but they are not yours.

"I settled, forgot you, found a good man, married, made love, made a nice life for myself, sisters and brothers and friends from around and about, kids and grandkids, but you were not there."

The assassin's patience had worn thin. "I don't remember you, I don't remember anything about Bray, and I don't remember nothing. I could have loved you once, fifty years ago. But my father took us off to Germany or somewhere."

She smiled as if she'd been apologized to. "It's alright. I'll love you for all time whatever. Sigh. What, in God's name, are you here for?"

"I need a reason?"

"Oh, Dave, I know you so well."

He got frank. "I'm here because I'm a hired assassin, and I've been paid to kill the current principal of Ravenswell public school. I don't ask any questions."

"The Tory?"

"Yeah, I heard him called that. All I know is his name is Daniel Baker."

"Mr. Baker?"

"That would follow."

"Always with the jokes."

They drifted back into the pavilion. He felt like holding her hand. It was now "Crocodile Rock". His fellow sexagenarians were bopping from foot to foot as if their agéd bones were children's bones. Across the way he saw some medical attendees watching quietly, and waiting for some disaster.

Without even looking at her, he said: "I loved you too."

Maybe she hadn't heard him, for she said: "Oh hello, Mr. Baker!"

Dave looked over to see Margaret holding out her hand to some forty-year-old geezer. He said: "I hear you're the boll 'o the boll!"

"Please, I'm blushed almighty already."

The Baker went away, probably to palm with other influents. "That's your target, you old dog. Hah! Go and get his attention, if you like. But--please--come back to me."

"Love Train."

She laughed into her sleeve and continued: "I knew you then and I think you're on a lark. I mean, my God, you're still all in your head."

The assassin touched the little finger of her left hand, and went off to see from a safe distance Mr. Baker, principal of Ravenswell school and candidate for the Irish Legislative Assembly. He got nodded to three times by his fellows.

"Oi," said someone to him. Said by some guy as old as he was. "You were the bloke, David Smithson, right, whom we all loved, who then disappeared, am I right or am I right?"

David said: "I'm sorry, my friend. I'm only here by chance."

The other bloke gasped on his words.

David said: "I love you, you know."

The other bloke nodded, harrumphed appropriate to his age, and moved on.

Mr. Baker was talking to a small group. Another Elton John song was playing. The assassin saw there was little way to accomplish his mission, but there had to still be a way. He looked around. Margaret had all her eyes on him.

Mister Baker was saying: "I have to say I'm humbled here. Look at you all, pillars all, who have kept our little town, fiercely independent of Dublin and of those bastards in London (a cheer came up here) who think they can rule us. I say, hurray for the boys and girls of Ravenswell!"

Everyone whooped, and the assassin hopped on his feet. He almost whooped himself.

Mr. Baker moved off, to his left, looking quite sick, to the door that led to the seaside balcony. David saw an opportunity there. But before that could be actualized a very hot redhead (is there any other kind?) pushed her finger into his chest and said: "You're David Smithson, right?"

David Smithson said: "Yes." He could smell her sex. "I don't recall your proper name, I'm sorry."

"It's been a long time, I forgive you. You were my first kiss."

The assassin, though he had no memory of the event to which this typically hotter-than-fire-crotch was referring to, said, blithely: "My heart hasn't changed."

The redhead whooped in laughter, because redheads are a species apart, on the fringes of human, more orangutan than regular people. Yet despite his inclination to pry her off to a place in which to continue to kiss her, he had to go out to the seaside balcony to kill Baker.

The orangutan said: "My daughter's kids are in there, like we were. I hate how time washes our lives away. There's got to be something in the psalms about it."

Without even a word of farewell, the assassin went out the door to the seaside balcony.

The sea stretched across to the distant lights of Liverpool, or perhaps some town to the south of Liverpool. A figure, undoubtedly Mr. Baker, was looking in that direction. David the assassin quietly crept up, pulling the garotte from his pocket and tensing it between his hands.

Mr. Baker said: "Mr. David Smithson, I presume."

David didn't understand how his steps had been heard. Perhaps he had cast a small shadow.

David asked: "How could you know me?"

Mr. Baker said: "It's the number-three conversation in the schoolyard. You are extraordinarily well-remembered, almost supernaturally."

"If I was a normal person, I would be flattered."

Mr. Baker sighed. "And, on top of all that, you've come to kill me."

"Yes. Do you know who gave me this job? I don't quite know."

"Oh, you enter politics, you look like you're going places, and there's always someone, Tory or Labour, who wants you cut down. Let's just say: powerbrokers."

David paused. "And you're ready for it?"

"Well, who is ever ready to be murdered? However, you will find yourself killed yourself. Hah!"

Mr. Baker thought the phraseology amusing, and continued: "The whole building knows who you are. You'll never ever get to the train station. You were even spotted at your hotel. Such information gets around, you know."

David knew he was so nearly trapped that to describe himself as trapped would be an understatement. "Are you telling me to save my skin somehow?"

"Yes, and I have found the best solution."

"And what might that be?"

Mr. Baker turned. He was some twenty years' shy of David, and about as frightened. "Give it up, your profession."

"And do what?"

"There's going to be a job opening in a month, here, in Bray."

"Again, doing what?"

"Principal of Ravenswell Primary School. There are good benefits, and there's no retirement age."

"Because you'll be in Dublin, I suppose."

"Yes." Mr. Baker kicked a heel at the wooden deck under his feet. "Really, I'm the best person for the Taoiseach. I'm what they call, in America, a 'shoo-in'."

"Who does the hiring?"

"If it's on my recommendation to the county board, which it will be, then I suppose I do the hiring. I'll be in the government, after all."

David thought about it. "The people who hired me will come looking for me."

"If they do, the whole sorry mess will explode in their faces. You're an assassin, you'll know what to do."

David said: "I know I have a few days left before I have to contact my hirers."

"Then go back to the Strand Hotel and think about it. Go, now, go, before I reconsider living."

David nodded and turned away, toward the door. Mr. Smith called after him: "The benefits package is quite generous."

David stopped for a moment, and then proceeded into the pavilion. Suddenly, sixty voices sang out: "For he's a jolly good fellow."

And so on.