The War Artist

by Simon Cleary

  He wills the aches in his body away, as Marcus has taught him, this power of self-control, and what it grants its adherents. People don’t understand that discipline is more than just protection, more than effectiveness, more than moral strength. That if one knows where to look there’s reverie in it too. When he stops for water, it’s only after the soldier in front of him has stopped first.

  Eventually, after a three-hour march, they reach their destination, and slowly approach the village square where they’ve arranged to meet the elders.

  The sappers clear a stand of old cypress, and then the mudbrick wall of the adjacent compound. Nothing. The boys are positioned nicely, providing cover just in case, Starc’s section near the entrance to the compound, Beckett’s on the other side of the trees. His lips are pursed, an old Second World War tune, ‘Whistle While You Work’. Where did a kid like him learn that? Phelan muses. It’s midday by now and the heat is barely softened by the shade of the grove.

  Phelan joins Gruen by a large cypress tree as the lieutenant listens intently to what’s coming in on comms.

  ‘Any chatter?’ Phelan asks when he’s got Gruen’s attention.

  ‘Nothing. Everything’s quiet.’

  ‘That must mean there were no spotters watching my helicopter arrive this morning.’ When Gruen doesn’t respond he forces a reply. ‘You’d agree, wouldn’t you Tony?’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ the lieutenant says, refusing to give him what he wants. ‘How did you find the march, Sir?’

  ‘Fine, Tony, just fine.’ Phelan resists the temptation of saying he loved it. He has forgotten the encounter with the girl and all he can feel now as he squats near the base of the cypress are his stinging thighs, and it is a sweet thing.

  Gruen takes off his helmet and glasses, and Phelan follows his lead. Though hot, at least the glare’s not quite as brutal here. The elders will have been alerted to the patrol making its way up the valley, will know now there is a smaller group of four of them – he and his security, the terp and the lieutenant – waiting outside the compound for them.

  Eventually three bearded maliks emerge, their flowing robes unable to conceal the stiffness of their joints. Even so, Phelan can see that Gruen is on alert, checking again that cover is in place.

  ‘Salaam alaikum, sanga astai?’ Gruen says to each of them.

  ‘Walaikum salam, kha yam manana, taso sanga astai?’

  ‘Shokor dae, zhuwande osae.’

  Phelan waits as Lieutenant Gruen continues the long greeting ritual – family and health and prosperity – to gauge the men. Not just old, he thinks, but reluctant. Gruen spreads out the patterened sheets of material they’ve brought along, not the carpets the locals would normally use, but the best they can do, lighter for the march. The maliks join them sitting in the shade. Gruen introduces Phelan as his boss.

  A big boss? One of the maliks asks. No, Gruen answers, just in case, a little boss, and they all laugh, the terp too, but the elders see the deference, see in Phelan not his age – though older than they are, he looks younger – but his careful dark eyes, his thin lips and bulging neck.

  Phelan’s Pashto is just good enough to take him beyond first salaams, enough for these ancient-eyed village elders to nod and murmur to each other.

  We can build the bridge, Lieutenant Gruen says through the interpreter. By which he means his engineers can. It’ll be so strong it won’t wash away in a flood. You can get your crops to market faster. It’ll help the entire village. If you agree to it, Gruen says, the whole community will be grateful, not to us, but to you.

  The maliks nod. And yet. We’ll consider, they say, directing themselves to Phelan, rising and shaking hands and touching chests lightly with the tips of their fingers. Phelan bows, lower than Gruen.

  Kids have begun to gather around the sapper with the harelip on the other side of the grove. Through the trees they see him holding up a tennis ball he must have brought with him, and then miming cricket shots until one of the kids cottons on and runs off to get a stick they can use as a bat.

  ‘Becks and his fucking cricket,’ Lieutenant Gruen mutters in Phelan’s direction, ‘Becks and his fucking balls. If he’s not juggling pebbles, or balancing a soccer ball on his head, he’s tossing a cricket nut at you. “Sir,” he’ll call out, and if you’re quick enough you’ll catch it. Otherwise it’ll hit you and the fucker will cack himself.’ Though Gruen is shaking his head, Phelan understands it is with fondness.

  The two men watch as more and more kids gravitate towards Sapper Beckett and his scratch cricket match. Eventually Gruen orders Starc’s section to cover the game, while he squats beside a wall to radio in an update. Phelan stretches. Gruen strains to hear the comms operator above Beckett’s enthusiastic hooting, the sounds of the sapper throwing down leg breaks, encouraging the kids. Maybe the sapper is right, Phelan thinks, and we’ve got as much chance winning the locals over with cricket as we do building bridges and schools.

  When the ball is hit towards them, Phelan bends to collect it. Rather than lobbing it gently back to the boy who’s come after it, Phelan jogs out with the ball onto the makeshift oval, leaving his warrant officer to shrug his shoulders and shake his head ruefully.

  They return by a different route, leaving the green zone and crossing to the other side of the river, with Phelan closer to the back of the patrol. The river is thigh-high and cold, but slow. Some of the men take a piss as they wade across, pausing mid-stream. Not Phelan.

  ‘That’s an ideal place for a ford,’ he says to Gruen when they’re together on the other bank. ‘They’d be crazy to knock it back.’

  ‘They will though,’ Gruen replies.

  ‘Why do you think that, Tony?’

  ‘Because they’re not fuckwits,’ Lieutenant Gruen says. ‘They know the bridge is for us, not them. And because they think it’s too dangerous to accept gifts from Americans. Or Australians. No difference in their eyes.’

  It occurs to him how exhausted Lieutenant Gruen is. Forty days of being shot at in the middle of the night. Forty nights without a decent sleep. The man looks rooted. And now he’s responsible for the safety of a brigadier who’d insisted on joining his patrol. A tourist. In the eyes of some of Gruen’s men perhaps he’s only here hunting for gongs. Phelan knows, of course, that Gruen’s career is on the line if anything goes wrong and that the patrol commander is probably doing his best not to let any of it show. But before Phelan can think of what to say, Gruen apologises – ‘Sorry, Sir,’ – and quickly gives orders.

  The soldiers move forward. The path rises above and away from the river, and the patrol passes a cemetery, the headstones barely discernible from the rocks of the dasht. After twenty minutes the path descends again to water level, where a high rock and timber footbridge crosses back over the river to the market village, the first they’d passed through earlier that day.

  Lieutenant Gruen orders the patrol to halt while he takes stock. As Phelan squats by a knee-high boulder on the side of the rocky path, more exposed than he’d like, Sapper Beckett reports another bunch of kids crossing the footbridge. If there was anything coming in from Tiger Shark, any chatter being picked up, the lieutenant wouldn’t risk crossing here. They watch as the kids move away on the other side of the bridge. Watch and wait till Gruen gives the order to move forward.

  The sappers approach the bridge and peer under it, looking for exposed wires or fresh rockwork. Nothing. They move onto the bridge itself, swinging their metal detectors rhythmically from side to side, and then, when across, when the bridge is cleared, they secure it.

  The first section of the patrol doesn’t cross but continues seventy metres past the bridge, each man covering the other as they wade across further down-river, waist high, weapons above heads, the current jostling them.

  The rest of the patrol uses the footbridge, man by man. Phelan’s warrant officer crosses first, then Starc, followed
by Phelan himself. When he is across he turns back towards Gruen on the other side and sees him stiffen, sees him press his earpiece harder against his ear, concentrating. The look on his face is short of panic, but Phelan can read it well enough, even from here: there’s chatter coming in, enemy spotters somewhere in the area. Danger no longer latent.

  Starc’s section provides cover from behind a low wall as the rest of the platoon cross, one by one, bent low, moving quickly. Lieutenant Gruen squats by the wall, comms in his ears, scanning the country around them. A group of men watches them through the trees, but disappears when the terp calls out. Phelan senses the shifts in the atmospherics. Whatever Gruen is learning from Tiger Shark, whatever intelligence is beginning to pour in. Whether women and children are leaving the village to the north or youths of fighting age are gathering over a ridgeline, Phelan doesn’t need to hear it to know something is off.

  Lieutenant Gruen changes plan, orders the platoon to skirt the village rather than proceed through it, a new map home.

  Phelan reads Kira’s arm as she resumes her work. The buzzing machine, the needle on his own skin. He sees again the dark-haired warrioress with her long, flowing dress on Kira’s left arm. The three-blued dress, her skin, her arms, her neck, the curve of her breasts, the bared thigh and leg.

  ‘Why the warrior?’ he asks.

  For beauty, she thinks, for kick-arse strength. Because that’s what I am. Can’t you see?

  ‘Why not?’ she returns. And then, after a slight pause: ‘And why Samuel Robert Beckett?’

  Though they may be reluctant at first, they usually end up talking. Pain does that, opens people up.

  You might be hoping for it, you might even be expecting it, but you’re never ready. You’re moving slowly, doing your arcs, eyes following the barrel as it swings. In front of you and behind you are highly trained warriors, bodies of nerve endings, twitching. Soldiers who’ve seen action say there’s contact, and then there’s everything else that happens in your life. They are right, thinks Phelan.

  Breath, no breath. Hell, all hell.

  Phelan sees Sapper Beckett squatting on the other side of the small almond grove. Even in that heat, even from his haunches, there’s an agility about the sapper as he rises from the irrigation channel, a quickness in him as he steps over the low wall running beside the channel.

  But it’s then that the world explodes and you know there’s no quiet corner left on earth, none that’ll ever admit you anyway.

  The sapper doesn’t just drop, he’s blown backwards over the wall on the other side of the ditch by the rocket-propelled grenade and there’s machine gun fire and small arms fire, and the ground around them all is spitting with rounds.

  ‘Man down, man down!’ Starc yells.

  Phelan takes cover at the base of a tree, fifteen metres south of where the sapper was hit, his ears ringing. Hartley is crouching beside him, popping rounds off, the enemy everywhere.

  ‘Get low, Boss!’ Hartley screams. ‘Lower!’

  Rounds are flying either side of them, others biting into the tree, a 270-degree engagement. Grenades are being launched from a compound on the western edge of the village, rounds from ahead and behind.

  Gruen will be calling in the medevac, but there’s no way a chopper’s getting down in this without Apache cover.

  Phelan calculates the distance to where the sapper has fallen. No one is closer than he is.

  ‘Cover me!’ he yells.

  Hartley looks blankly at him for a moment, and then, when he realises what Phelan’s going to do, grabs at the brigadier’s leg.

  ‘No, Sir! Don’t Sir!’

  But Phelan is already out from behind the tree, and Hartley props himself up and lays down what cover he can, no more than a guess at where the rounds are coming from, aiming at a lone building ahead of them, muzzle flashes from there at least.

  Phelan rushes forward, staying low. He sloshes through the shallow channel this side of the mudbrick wall, then stumbles, his old legs, a lurching step before regathering and throwing himself over the wall where the sapper disappeared.

  When he lands it’s only a couple of metres from Beckett, and when he looks over, Beckett’s head is turned towards him already, and his lips are moving.

  Phelan crawls closer, and sees a vein in the sapper’s neck twitch. Chunks of mud are bursting off the wall above their heads, showering them.

  ‘Charlie …’ the young sapper croaks.

  ‘It’s okay son, it’s okay,’ Phelan says. But as he nudges alongside he sees one of the soldier’s legs is gone, and the other is shredded. Even if he had morphine, there’s no thigh to inject into, and no bandage big enough. The sapper is a torso in a pool of dark coursing blood, and Phelan goes to reach for him, but it’s nothing he’s capable of imagining, and there’s horror, there’s nothing he can staunch, and this man is draining away.

  Tear Drops

  The downstairs bells ring again and Phelan’s body jerks at the unexpected sound, kicking out against it and the chair and Kira’s hand. His own breathing.

  ‘Whoa,’ Kira says, quickly pulling the machine away from his violently twisting body. ‘No sudden movements, soldier.’

  She lifts her foot off the pedal and the machine falls silent. Together they listen to the footsteps on the stairs.

  A thin, gaunt-faced man appears, his knuckly hand gripping the banister, his matted blond hair tucked into a Jack Daniel’s cap, pulled low on his forehead, concealing his eyes. Kira can’t quite make out what’s on his black T-shirt, but guesses it’s metal of some sort. The images on the shirt flow over onto his biceps, the spiderweb tattoos on his elbows, his crowded forearms. He’s inked, but not by her, not by Flores, not by anyone she recognises.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ she says to Phelan, resting the tattoo machine on the tray and rolling back her chair, peeling off her latex gloves as she rises.

  Lightning flashes beyond the window.

  ‘Got any crowns?’ the man calls out from across the room when he sees her, his voice high-pitched, strained.

  ‘Sure,’ Kira says slowly, tossing her gloves casually into the tidy bin. ‘We’ve got crowns.’

  ‘It’s gotta be big. You know. From here …’ he points from one side of his chest, ‘… to here,’ pointing to the other. ‘Like this. I want it like this. See? A big crown. Big. Big as fuck.’

  Kira gestures to the coffee table where the large folios are displayed in a neat fan. ‘Have a look in the folders over there, see what you can find.’

  The man follows her pointing finger, twisting his head, but his gaze gets lost before it reaches the table and he swings back around, locking onto her again.

  ‘Like this,’ he says, his agitated hand drawing a jagged zigzag in the air. ‘Pointy on the top, like. You know? A crown.’ His bony index finger scratches at space.

  ‘Sure,’ Kira says, speaking as evenly as she can now, almost soothingly, offering her own voice as something he might follow, a way down from whatever he’s on, whatever high is already collapsing around him. She slowly skirts the counter to where folios of flash are laid out on the table. She’s managed situations like this before, is aware of the danger on this side of the counter, but not her limitations.

  ‘Here,’ she says calmly, choosing a design from the first folder and opening it out for him to see, pausing, then slowly turning the page, showing him another design, and then moving on to a third. ‘Why don’t you have a look through these? See what you can find.’

  She holds the folder out to him but he just stands there, rocking on the balls of his feet, up and down, snorting, looking around with his tiny eyes, nodding his head, jacked right up still, teetering. On his left cheekbone are two crude teardrops, barely more than smudges of prison ink, the residue of burnt shoe rubber. Just out, she guesses, and already it’s too much for him. He’s going to burst, she thinks, he’s g
oing to blow.

  ‘Is Prince here?’ the man blurts. Her stomach tightens. Flores’s brother.

  ‘No,’ she replies, carefully returning the folder to the table, then slowly stepping back. ‘He doesn’t come around here anymore.’ She can’t bring herself to speak his name. ‘He hasn’t been here for months,’ she adds. Wishing it were true.

  He stands there, looking at her, scratching at the side of his neck as if something is buried beneath his skin.

  ‘What’s the biggest crown you’ve ever done?’

  ‘I can do big,’ she says, taking another slow step back towards the counter.

  ‘Well, bigger than that. Bigger than you’ve ever done. Bigger than anyone.’

  A crazy exultation in him. ‘And then …’ He begins to lift his T-shirt up, and she sees his stomach, thin and hard.

  ‘It’s cool,’ she says. ‘Keep your shirt on bro. It’s cool.’

  Phelan measures the room, his chair to the counter, the counter to Kira, the gap between Kira and the man. Registers that the man’s hands are empty, that the junkie hasn’t even seen him yet. This set of scales Phelan was trained so long ago to employ, so finely calibrated before falling into disuse, now called on for the second time in a week. Phelan measures and waits for the moment of action.

  The man pulls down his shirt obediently, but soon becomes agitated again, as if regretting his compliance. He looks around wildly. Only now does he see Phelan in the chair. His eyes dart back to Kira, as if to reassure himself she hasn’t disappeared. He stands there, thin and rocking, his left hand gouging at his neck, his right hand slapping against his hip.

  ‘So you want a crown?’ Kira says.

  ‘A crown …’ he repeats, then remembers. ‘Yeah, then underneath, you know – family. You know … the most important thing. In a banner or something, family. Because that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?’