A Stolen Season

by Rodney Hall

  ‘Those media people can get in your face,’ Yao says. ‘Even without meaning to.’

  ‘And Linda begged to see you anyway,’ Yao says.

  ‘If you need me to fetch something, just ask,’ Yao says. ‘Though there’s no need to talk.’

  ‘I suppose Bridget will be back soon,’ Yao says.

  Flat on his back Adam closes his eyes the better to hear. Aeons later he experiments with opening them. The child has made herself at home, perched at the table, drawing private visions with bright crayons brought from home.

  ‘It’s all such. Bullshit.’ He manages to sum up his exhaustion. ‘Clinging on to. Hope.’

  His shoulder is being somehow patted.

  ‘Save your voice, mate.’

  ‘What for? Talking hurts but. So does everything.’

  With words they work around one another, hinting at the special consideration shown by friends.

  ‘I keep setting off. From nowhere. Only to end up here. In the last place I. Want to be.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Weird. When your. Body’s finished. Your mind wakes. Up.’ He coughs cruelly and juggles with the straw in his water glass. ‘Fuck it.’ He sucks. ‘Memories you can’t. Escape.’

  The child’s crayon scratches at the paper.

  ‘Out on recce one. Day in the eastern. Sector. We tracked down some rebel. Iranians causing Saddam a headache.’

  ‘Iranians in Iraq?’

  ‘Yep. Enemies against enemies. Take my word. It’s beyond even our. Intelligence guys. Just when we. Fixed their position. About to set off. I got. Singled out. For an escort job.’ Quite without warning, or even the intention of doing so, he finds the words he has so far not been able to share with his wife. ‘Escorting. A famous British correspondent. He had some kind of. Diplomatic pass.’ And the scene leaps alive in memory—easy is easy—the cool monastic air of that library building. Arches and columns. Boots tramping the marble inlay. A dry well with a broken handle. Constant screams escape the deep inner passages—screams of men in pain. ‘The wrong. Place to go.’

  What followed was himself being lifted from the wreckage. Embraced by a stretcher. With no part to play in his own survival. The desperate orderly binding as much as could be held together with gauze, bandaging and strapping him up. Meanwhile growling privately, ‘Jesus Christ! How fucked up is this!’ until he realized Adam could hear. Then the good man apologized, explaining, ‘The helicopter got ordered back to base!’ His lips trembling. ‘We’ll do what we can, buddy.’ He added grimly, ‘We’re not about to let you die.’ The tent flap ballooning in the wind. The ambulance bumping along. Fringes of a war-torn town seen through the corner of a van window peeled off and pulled away. The jolt and plunge into the belly of a transport aircraft, cradle swaying. A thick curved pane of glass, the flash of chrome in sunlight. The climax of a hypodermic needle and the nurse holding it at an expert angle. Then flying backwards into a repeated nightmare across the vast unreachable lightness of Mesopotamia, that ancient hellhole.

  He breaks the spell by getting ready to stand with the aid of the Contraption, loose clothing swathed around pendent bags of flesh.

  ‘Need help?’ Yao asks.

  ‘No, mate. It gets. Easier.’

  Adam, launched and afloat on the remains of the morning, confronts the enormity of another day to be survived. Each supported footfall needs to be calculated before the risk can be taken. To his methodical mind a disaster is a disaster—a wound a wound—ruin ruin. And jokes funny.

  ‘And like this. I’m the biggest. Joke of all.’ He turns to the child. ‘Show me your. Drawing.’

  But Linda has words only for her father.

  ‘Daddy, this one is for Adam. But not for her.’ The little girl indicates with her eyes the arrival of Bridget.

  ‘You can draw one for Bridget,’ Yao suggests, ‘some other time.’

  So much that’s in my mind is just rubbish: brands and slogans and the names of movie stars, for Christ’s sake. A fucking overload of trash. We must finally accept the fact. What we’re looking for can’t be measured. There is a life within life. ‘Nostalgia’ means the pain of returning.

  Yao begins dismantling the formwork from the concrete inclines, loosening timbers with hammer and crowbar to reveal the clean contours of the ramp. There is grace in manual labour. Once the stained boards are stacked, he brushes away the crumbled grit with cement-hardened hands. And stretches his back. The child following him around inspects his handiwork. She plants her fists on her hips.

  ‘It doesn’t go anywhere,’ she objects.

  Yao smiles and strokes her glossy black hair.

  ‘Adam thinks it does.’

  ‘That’s because he’s all mashed up.’

  ‘He’s pretty brave if you ask me.’

  ‘Is he clever?’

  ‘Yep. Clever too.’

  Linda seems satisfied. ‘So am I.’

  ‘Well, in that case, you will be able to see where the ramp goes.’

  ‘It goes up and down.’

  At this he kisses her tenderly and takes her hand, which he encloses in both of his.

  ‘Yes it does. And soon he’ll be able to walk on it by himself. He’ll come right down to here.’

  ‘Why don’t his legs work, Daddy?’

  ‘They do—in a sort of way.’

  She nods as she thinks this through. Yao squats to level with his daughter.

  ‘Darling, do you like Bridget?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s promised to pick you up from school on Wednesday so I can teach an extra class and earn more money.’

  Linda says nothing to this, though her eyes grow enormous with comprehension.

  Unbidden, a distant memory of Datong awakes in Yao. Once on a family outing his father played at ‘losing’ him in a bamboo plantation. He was about Linda’s age at the time. It was just a game, the sort of thing parents justify to themselves as life lessons—because every child must know how to face up to the world—while lacking courage to admit the delicious corruption of acting out an escape from responsibility. He was lost. A child alone in the perpendicular thicket, with not another soul in sight. Deep dead bamboo leaves silenced his shoes. He was surrounded by the eternal sigh of scourges. Panic rising. Everywhere the ground sloped. The faint creaky murmur of plants took over. A larger life had him trapped: the same bewildering maze in every direction. Yet some clear hard instinct warned him against the easy way down. So he faced about. And no sooner had he stifled his desperation than, sure enough, a shrine stood up ahead. Also the little car borrowed from the schoolteacher, parked in the clearing just where it had been left. Blue and the right shape. Standing beside it, his mama waved like he was winning something.

  This is one of those times, in the bleakness of set routines, when the craving for music grows so intense Adam has to hear the beat thundering through the room—he simply has to, and headphones will not do—but the resulting nausea drives him to clutch his skull as the arches of his nasal passages fill with the smell of blood. Dazed and off-centre, spun-out, sweat-slippery and uttering croaky cries of loneliness, he loses control of the Contraption and crashes full length on the floor. The pile-driving music plays unchecked.

  Seen through red waves of pain is Bridget looking at him from a sideways angle. Her profile—eerily unfamiliar—fragile as engraved glass. Despite his best efforts he begins to sink.

  ‘Adam, Adam,’ she says. ‘What happened? Is anything broken?’

  And her voice caresses him.

  ‘Nothing that. Can be. Fixed.’

  ‘Shall I lie here with you?’ she proposes.

  How is that a help? Yet it is. And next thing in the waking dream of disengaging the Contraption—with someone else to do the heavy lifting—her offe
r is a promise, a gift, afloat, suspended in air between them, for him to make sense of. So he presses his open palm against her belly. That’s how close she is and how simple his terms might be. A moment later he catches himself out—sleeping and safe in bed—because she lies down, according to a promise made long ago, seeming to gaze at him with brilliant eyes. A vision meshed with old memories. But whoever thought of the tongue as an implement of measurement? There is no identity beyond action, that’s the truth. She murmurs, ‘I had to come. I had to come, to be with you.’ He listens eagerly. Queer, how the obedient flesh rises to her command. Is this, he begs, your success or mine? Her warm lips seal the issue. Is it only a dream? ‘Stop asking.’

  In broad daylight, alone under the merciful sheet, Adam Griffiths surrenders to desire.

  *

  Like a pop-up book, the whole place is fully equipped for filming—furniture moved to create space—and the interview is upon him. At the top of the ramp and framed by the porch Ryan stands with Bridget. Leaf-scented sunshine buffets in and around them. Media people fill the house with sociable energy, the purposeful unclipping and uncoiling of cables. These guys don’t seem concerned by Adam’s condition. They interfere with his medical clutter, laptop, books, television and remote, rearranging everything to look natural.

  ‘Do I look. Okay?’ he whispers to Bridget with a ridiculous self-mocking wink.

  Accompanied by the faint whine of powered joints he struts into position at his stand-up desk where he comes to a halt like a wonky tower, islanded in the dazzle of artificial light.

  ‘Yes, we’ll have you walking on,’ Ryan says. ‘That looks tremendous.’

  ‘And then. Shall I. Ar. Sit down?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘It takes. Time,’ Adam warns.

  ‘All cool. Your high-tech thing is amazing to watch . . . as long as you’re comfortable.’

  ‘If I was any more. Comfortable. I’d be asleep.’

  But Ryan has no sense of humour today.

  Back in position. Heart thumping and all on edge, Adam’s spirit rises. He lifts his chin for a collar microphone to be fitted. The outside door shuts, transforming the room into a studio.

  ‘Give us a voice level. Just say a few words.’

  A hush falls.

  ‘Ar. As you see. They tried their best. To kill me. But seems they. Ar. Misfired.’ Adam twists his mouth to a grin. ‘Is that. Loud enough?’

  ‘Excellent. So when you’re ready, we’re good to go.’

  Bridget retreats to the recess of the kitchen doorway. From this position she can see them, live, and she can also see them on the director’s monitor. She herself will have no part to play. This is not about her. She watches her husband wait for his cue to enter—darkened by tragic experience—while her lover, the showman, readies himself eager to shine.

  ‘Roll camera on my count: four . . . three . . . two.’

  With titanic effort Adam swings his weighty wreckage into place. He concentrates on guiding the exo-skeleton across the floor before he turns to face the public. Bridget glances at the monitor to confirm what she sees. Spookily, although the real Adam has come to a standstill, the camera continues to move, zooming in for a close-up till his cauliflower face fills the screen. As he goes through the separate motions of sitting down Ryan receives him gravely.

  So, the two men in Bridget’s life confront one another. Each of them surprises her in his own way because, as they share the screen, they give the curious impression of setting out to match ruthlessness for ruthlessness. Hopefully no one sees this but her.

  ‘Corporal Adam Griffiths is a casualty of the war in Iraq.’ The interview begins. ‘Against all probability he’s alive to tell the tale.’

  But Adam’s unpredictable memory somehow trips him before he can speak a single word—landing him back in the night of his escape and the sudden grief he feels for Ratso—so that he must fight to hold on to the present. His throat works at a soundless obstacle.

  Ryan sees this and comes to the rescue during the couple of seconds needed for recovery. ‘Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Adam. I know it can’t be easy. Your injuries and so forth. The difficulty of speaking. So, even to stand up and sit down . . . you need this specialized device?’

  ‘I’d collapse in a. Heap without it. Not a pretty sight.’

  He’s okay.

  Ryan settles in as listener. ‘Can you explain what happened?’

  ‘Pretty basic stuff. Escort duty. My vehicle. Got in the. Ar. Way of a. Rocket missile.’

  ‘You were a soldier in the army?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Take us back there . . . to the moment of impact.’

  By way of reply Adam’s hands open with painful slowness for his remaining fingers to demonstrate an explosion. His voice catches up.

  ‘I didn’t. Know we were hit. All I knew was. Something had. Gone off that. I’d missed.’ The camera cruises the privacy of his reconstructed cheeks and neck, down to a V of visible chest heaving with effort. ‘Mad with myself. Ar. When I couldn’t. Move to help the. Others.’

  ‘A British journalist.’

  ‘And the. Driver.’

  ‘May we show your injuries?’

  ‘Knock yourself. Out.’

  A woman in nurse uniform steps into the frame and gingerly reveals moon craters of whitish skin covering his reconstructed torso. Then she fully removes the upper garment. The stifled gasps of the crew are audible. Ryan wags his head. This—now this!—is the hoped-for impact.

  ‘So when they cut you free . . .’

  ‘I was already. Dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘Fully dead?’

  ‘Dead and finished. Here’s the funny side. I even made a. Botch of that. Because I’m still here. In one piece.’

  ‘After years of surgery.’

  ‘Years of. Ar. Surgery, you bet.’

  Ryan waits for more.

  ‘Well now it’s. My turn to demand. A few answers.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like. What was it. For.’

  ‘The war?’ Ryan pounces. ‘The war itself?’

  ‘The war and. Ar.’ Jumping the gun, Adam seizes on the wider implications. ‘The mess we’ve made. Worldwide.’

  ‘Ongoing wars?’

  ‘Refugees.’

  ‘Even climate change?’

  ‘Because given a choice. Between whether this. Is a conspiracy or a fuck up. I’ll go for. Conspiracy.’ His eyes are dark with knowing. ‘It’s too big. For a fuck up.’

  ‘All right. So since when?’

  ‘Maybe. Since the accountants. Took the wheel.’

  Ryan smiles indulgently to signal a possible difference of opinion.

  ‘So you were actually dead? I can’t get over that.’

  ‘Me either,’ Adam quips. ‘But I got left with. No choice.’

  ‘Can I ask about the experience? Everyone will want to hear what it felt like . . . and if you remember much?’

  ‘Nothing, mate. I got cheated. There’s nothing but. A blank.’

  The camera creeps in for a head shot.

  ‘And by that time a team of American surgeons had brought you back.’

  ‘They did a. Great job, ay? Considering I was. No beauty to begin with.’

  Now the nurse kneels to reveal one mutilated leg while Adam watches the exposed nape of her neck.

  ‘So, give us some context. Take us back there.’

  ‘Well the whole country. Iraq . . .’ This time he allows himself the full experience, dragging the past into his lungs like a junkie, slowness investing each syllable with the weight of scrupulous assessment. ‘Was in ruins.’

  ‘Ruined already?’

  ‘Yep. When we landed. The guys were. Over the moon.
Because. Anyone could see we. Were on the winning side.’

  ‘Yet it was still dangerous?’

  Adam nods. He needs to adjust his jaw. He tries clamping his teeth.

  Ryan supplies more detail. ‘In fact, your vehicle was hit. And the driver and a journalist were killed.’

  ‘They. Lucked out.’ The tragedy fills his chest. But he pulls himself together and his reconstructed lips attempt a grin. ‘Me, I lucked. In.’ Now the grin, heroically, becomes an achievement. ‘That’s my style.’

  ‘Even so, the rescuers had to cut you free.’

  ‘And they got me. Out. In time for. Pay day.’

  Ryan, as magician, chooses this moment to produce the sort of hat-and-rabbit trick popular in his profession.

  ‘Well, we have a surprise for you, Adam. Did you know that one of those guys actually filmed the rescue on his mobile? Yes, absolutely. What’s more, we tracked him down. Just a short clip. And here it is, coming up on your screen right now.’

  Footage kicks in—jolting and handheld—men with protective clothing and oxy torches are cutting through the metal of a twisted armoured vehicle. Sparks fly. Crowbars are brought in. Helmeted heads and active shoulders. Helpers gather round when a glimpse of gaping flesh is revealed. More uniforms push past. The image swings this way and that, showing flashes of sky, street, the corner of a building. Boots on the ground. Blood. And something else . . . some detail he sees (and yet does not see) . . . meaning what?

  Back in the real world Adam’s broken mouth opens on the pain.

  ‘Yo! Yikes!’

  Ryan helps out.

  ‘You’ve never seen this before?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Makes you wonder. Why they didn’t. Pull the pin and. Leave me there.’

  ‘To die?’

  ‘Soldiers get killed. That’s the risk.’

  Ryan ventures cautiously, ‘Still, you don’t question—I mean now—you don’t question whether survival is worth the suffering?’

  ‘Settle down, mate. It’s. Only my. Ar. Warped sense of. Humour.’

  ‘A whole team of specialists dedicated their skill to getting you back on your feet, after all.’

  ‘Great guys. Plus this.’ Adam indicates the Contraption. ‘Unreal. But life’s only. Life. And there’s times. When it’s . . .’ He changes tack, ‘It’s tough. Being a failure.’