Plus, while I knew that there could be repercussions, embarrassments about my lie, they weren’t very clearly delineated. I hadn’t broken any law; surely there would be a pretty wide margin for obfuscation if the moment of truth ever came? Even with just the dobár and dan I already had in the locker I’d be able to kerfuffle and exclaim at how much I’d forgotten, wouldn’t I?
‘What about a proper lunch?’ Shannon asked the van in Bavaria. It was only three roundabouts off the motorway before we were among the big Alpine chalets surrounded by their geometric woodpiles and mountain pastures so verdant in the summer sunshine they made you want to laugh. We rumbled along hedgeless roads, whose unbordered curves made them feel toytown. A strip of grey painted on the green.
The restaurant we chose was a walkers’ place, but with an area for boots to be taken off at the door and net curtains and carpet thick enough to give it a shush-dickhead-you’re-in-my-front-room-now atmosphere. We were seated in the middle of the room. The waiter viewed the ordering process as a negotiation whereby we’d start out with a proposition and after some frowning he would write down what he felt was an appropriate compromise. A company of middle-aged walkers smiled at us benevolently. I tried hard not to look at Shannon at all. But not looking at her seemed to involve quite a lot of checking where she was and every time I did, Sara clocked me and I could see her suspicions confirmed.
‘So, the question is,’ Shannon started, summoning the meeting to order as the water glasses clinked down, ‘whether we go in under the radar, or over the radar?’
‘Under,’ Onomatopoeic Bob stated with great certainty.
A large amount of meat was delivered to the table.
‘The pros are that under the radar we have greater flexibility, we’re free agents. We owe no one anything and we keep out of all the bullshit,’ Shannon said.
‘And the cons?’ Penny asked.
‘The argument against going in under the radar,’ Christian said, ‘is that it’s impossible and will never happen.’
‘We’re not talking about actual radar radars, are we? There are no radars?’ Von asked.
‘Well, that’s not true actually, Christian,’ Sara said, staring him down and ignoring Von. ‘Apparently a band got in to Sarajevo over Mount Igman and played a gig about three weeks ago with no official crossing papers.’
‘Right. And how do you know this?’ Christian asked.
‘My friend told me.’
‘Yeah, well, that may be right, that probably is right, but think: how many borders are we going to try to cross? How many checkpoints? All the European Union and the national borders – the militias, it’s a fucking mess. Maybe it’s possible under the radar. Maybe. But if we’re going to do this thing why don’t we do it for real? What are we sacred of? People go through. Convoys go through. The UN.’
‘The UN,’ said Onomatopoeic Bob and laughed. ‘Yeah, right. Murderers.’
‘Well, not quite murderers,’ I said.
‘What do you call someone who kills someone?’
‘They don’t actually, do they – kill anyone?’ Von asked.
‘What do you call someone who lets someone else be killed?’ Onomatopoeic Bob said.
‘I don’t know, a . . . naughty bystander?’ I said.
‘OK, you call them naughty bystanders. I call them murderers.’
‘Well, they aren’t,’ I muttered, as I chewed on the soft-rope iron taste of the overcooked beef.
‘We should be official,’ Christian said. ‘It’s a war zone. You don’t want to fuck around with that. Some bunch of militia? At midnight? In the middle of the countryside?’ I chewed and chewed but, like a bit of carpet edge, the piece of meat in my mouth was amenable to being moved around, but had no interest whatsoever in disintegrating.
‘Our dad said he has an embassy contact in Zagreb we should check in with? To help,’ Penny said.
‘What, Dirty Ronnie?’ Von asked.
‘Ronald Hatch. He’s a – I don’t know what it’s called. Not the ambassador but like a . . .’
‘I think he is the ambassador?’ Von said.
‘No, he’s not. He’s something.’
‘Maybe. He’s definitely something.’
‘Is it worth at least investigating?’ I asked, trying to generate enough saliva to sail the beef down on a wave.
‘I don’t want to kowtow to anyone,’ Bob said. ‘This mouth don’t suck no pinstriped cock.’
‘I guess we wouldn’t want to suck cock, we’d just – see what the procedure is . . . theoretically, and if it’s too much bullshit we could always back off?’ I said.
‘I don’t want to put my dick in their hands,’ Bob said, switching cocks.
‘Would you object to filling in a form?’ Christian asked.
‘No, I’ll fill in a form, obviously,’ he said, and looked around the group. ‘I’m just saying, Shannon, this group is non-aligned and, you know, we’re . . . human to human. A lot of the bullshit down there is because of “Oh, we’re UN”, “We’re Serb”, “I’m a Bosnian”, “I’m a Yugoslav”, “I’m a green”, “I’m a black”, “I’m a yellow banana with a tank”. I’m just saying, we’re all just people regardless of colour or creed and we shouldn’t forget that.’ He smiled simperingly at Penny, who looked away.
I moved on to a piece of coarse white meat. Chicken? Or turkey? Chicken, I reckoned, dense and flavourless, like a wodge of newspaper print wrapping a sponge that had been soaked in slightly savoury water.
‘OK. Official route or unofficial. Shall we vote?’ Shannon asked.
‘I don’t think we should vote,’ Onomatopoeic Bob said. ‘People will just do what they think. I think we should just see what happens.’
‘Who thinks we should vote?’ Shannon asked and everyone but Onomatopoeic Bob put their hand up.
‘I did not vote,’ Onomatopoeic Bob noted.
‘You abstained,’ Christian said.
‘No. I just wasn’t involved.’
‘OK,’ Shannon said. ‘The proposition I’m suggesting is we go to Zagreb –’
‘Where the man who isn’t an ambassador is,’ said Cally.
‘And we just – we don’t push it and we play it cool but we see what the situation is with the authorities and if it doesn’t feel like it’s going to compromise us, we go down the official route?’
‘Yes, I think we should check out the possibilities,’ Onomatopoeic Bob said, like that had been his view all along. Then we took another vote, which was unanimous.
An hour later, the bill was much on my mind. Von started its aggressive inflation with the first round of tall brown bottles of Bavarian lager, then he upped it again with a schnapps order and I wondered at his sublime equanimity at the spending of money. It’s quite a skill, spending, I think, and probably quite distinct from having the resources to pay. Sure, they’re related, but the ease that comes from years and years of successfully satisfied financial transactions, once you’ve got it, the lack of fear or kerfuffle about a bill, it is unrelated to money. He’s not scared, I thought. If he couldn’t pay he would be sure that some way to sort things out could be found. That the crunch would be funny when they said ‘Give me’ and he said ‘I haven’t got’. And if the bill was going to eat up his last D-mark then he’d pay that too, content that something would come along. Wealth probably warms you twice. Once with the raw power of the money and once with the layer of fat it leaves you with, blubbering you from abrasions.
‘So how’s the play coming along, Penny?’ Sara asked.
She smiled serenely. ‘Oh, good, very good.’
‘And can you give us an insight?’ Sara asked.
‘It is what it is,’ Penny said. ‘It takes the sort of themes we’ve talked about and gives them a twist and a punch. I hope.’
From those early table beers the afternoon soon crackled into fragments. Shannon went with Sara, walking to the edge of the conifer limits of the restaurant compound, talking intently.
‘Here you go,
man, have another one, I’m buying rounds,’ Von said and handed me a bottle of beer in a little anteroom bar. The proprietor regarded us coolly. He seemed to accept that it was his job to provide us with beverages when asked, but he was not about to pretend he liked it, selling all this product.
Christian was encouraging Von to have a chaser. They were forging an alliance, north London meets west London. Handsome meets handsome.
‘I once shat myself after drinking too much Pernod, so it gives me the heebie-jeebies,’ Von said. Pretending to display a degree of weakness was one of his ways of making friends.
‘Put an egg in it. Pernod and egg,’ Christian said; he kept a tighter ship but could see the attractions of Von. ‘A Pernod and egg white and a Tia Maria and milk, please?’ The owner said he had no such items in his compact sitting-room bar, intended for the consumption of a little white wine before dinner. Then Von asked for twelve whisky and Cokes – playing a game of trying to provoke him into either liking him or barring us all. Von wanted a climax to the afternoon, hugs all round or bolted doors. I snaked out to the loos, where Cally and Penny were having a smoke by the back door. Onomatopoeic Bob had skinned up a little soldier of grass and Golden Virginia.
‘Is that going to be OK?’ I asked, nodding to his tin, packed with a Ziploc bag of weed.
‘I’ve got a place I put it,’ he said, and pointedly passed the joint the other way. I looked back into the restaurant, thinking that the owner had probably never smelt a joint. After the number went round a couple of times, Cally and Onomatopoeic Bob went in to Von and it was me and Penny alone. I wobbled on my heels.
When you think you’re in love with someone your dials get thrown so far off it’s a joke. A stolen glance feels like a long stare, and a long stare can feel ridiculously brief. You don’t really know how close to stand or when to talk or when to stop, or certainly what’s reasonable to claim in terms of attention, because you’re an unfillable hole, you’ll take whatever they’ll give.
‘You are a cool person,’ I said. Urgh.
‘Thank you,’ she said. It wasn’t quite ‘So are you.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘The thing about me,’ she continued, ‘is I’m just like a potato.’
‘Uh-huh, right!’ I said and looked at her for a moment. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m just there, you know, like a potato. I’m not – I’m just what I am.’
‘Oh. OK?’ I said.
I’d been troubled ever since the night we met, going to see Shannon talk, that I’d somehow always missed the moment, that the previous minute was always the one when I should have acted – to show or tell her I liked her very much. I’d been living with a secret and it had turned pale and sickly under its rock. I’d got all twisted up around ideas of furtiveness and tactics. For a second, pissed and calm, this felt like a moment where maybe, in the Bavarian sun, I could just lean forward and kiss her and set everything right.
But I guess she could tell. Like a cow sitting down before the rain, or a pig facing slaughter: something in the air – the milliseconds of pause I left, or how I licked my lips – told her where I was going and she headed it off by saying, ‘You know I’m in trouble?’
I asked how and why, and she said that she had strong, strong feelings for Shannon.
‘She’s so – I don’t know. I just feel things for her.’
‘Oh God. Yes. Yes. I can see. God, totally. I can see that.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Oh yeah. To tell you the truth, Penny . . . me too.’
‘You too?’
‘Yes.’
What an incredibly clever move! A chess move. Now we’d shared our feelings, it would be a little duplicitous for Penny to act without letting me know.
‘Fuck. Really?’ she said and I nodded soulfully.
But I guess, as I thought about it, you would also have to say it was additionally a pretty stupid move.
‘She’s a really great person, isn’t she? Such passionate engagement with people and issues,’ I was saying, boring myself, when Von appeared and wordlessly took the nub of the roach and honked it out.
‘I’m collecting for the bar bill.’
‘Oh, I thought – didn’t we pay in the restaurant?’
‘Yeah, this is for the bar bill. For what we’ve had in there after lunch, matey.’
As Von had downed more and more of the brown bottles and encouraged us all to join in, it had definitely felt like he was buying. But, as I pulled up my checked shirt and dipped into my money belt, this wasn’t, so far as I could see, an implication that could be resurrected into a form of words that wouldn’t blow the atmosphere.
‘Cheers, bossman,’ he said, rubbing my notes together as he headed back in.
‘I thought he was buying them in the bar?’ Penny said.
‘Yes! I did think he seemed to be suggesting that, didn’t he?’
‘I don’t know how much cash he’s got with him, but he will spend it all. Then he’ll spend yours.’
‘Right, but the card?’
‘That’s for me. He doesn’t have a card. Mum thinks the credit card might stop me getting raped.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t have a card, of his own?’
‘I mean, I hope if we meet rapists, they have a credit card machine.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, a little stoned, wanting to join the joke but feeling I could easily go wrong.
She looked through to her brother at the bar. ‘Everyone’s corrupted by money, Andrew. But you have to be careful of the rich, because they know exactly how fucking nice it is.’
Chapter 10
BACK ON THE bus, Shannon pulled onto the road as I practised looking at her longingly. There was a mean-spirited flavour abroad as we tried to settle into the uncomfortably right-angled seats. The beer turned sour on our tongues.
‘The problem is the news media overcomplicate it because of their own interests,’ Onomatopoeic Bob said, over his shoulder, from up front. He was angling for an argument about the war.
‘Which are?’ Penny asked.
‘Look, Penelope, TV has one aim. Ratings, correct?’
‘Er, well . . .’ I said.
‘Yes or no, they want people to watch?’ Onomatopoeic Bob went on.
‘Yes,’ Christian admitted.
‘And does war make good television or not?’
‘You think, what, they’re overcomplicating the picture to prolong the war, to increase their viewing figures?’ asked Penny.
‘I’m just a guy who can see something, I’m not saying what it is, but it’s interesting what shape it is.’
‘We were pretty quick into Kuwait, that’s all I’ll say,’ Christian added. ‘That would be my message to the Bosnian Muslims – find oil in Sarajevo and fucking quick.’
‘The weapons traders won’t let this war end. This is their honeypot,’ Sara said.
‘That’s true,’ said Onomatopoeic Bob. ‘The gun runners always win.’
We hadn’t actually talked much about the war for a while, not in a concentrated way. The weeks after the first meeting, we’d sit around the dark varnished tables of an empty high-ceilinged pub in Didsbury and get competitive over how sick the war was making us. It was the marketplace bombing in Sarajevo in February that kicked us, like NATO, into action. The next meeting was held at Penny’s – and Shannon brought a scrapbook of horrible pictures from all the national newspapers and we handed it round, trying to give the correct amount of reverent silence to each photograph before turning the page. Both were horrible though: not looking at the pictures enough, like everyone else I knew did, and looking at the pictures too much, like most of the peace play troupe did.
For just how long should you look at a picture of a dead child? I would never have boasted about this to anyone out loud, but I did think I knew just about exactly the right length of time. I wouldn’t have wanted to put a figure on it, but somewhere between disregard and fetishisation is a sweet spot of appropriate reverence. I suppose
that’s what I felt I had a good handle on: the proportionate response to the war.
But now, a bit drunk, people were unlocking the strong feelings that in the general run of things didn’t get an opportunity for airing. Now they lit their opinions like magnesium sparklers for the sheer enjoyment of seeing their words shimmer.
‘I did hear from my father that to sort the whole thing out and impose a fair deal needed forty thousand troops,’ Penny said.
‘Right? Yes?’ Christian said.
‘Or four – was it four hundred thousand?’ She looked at Cally.
‘Er – it was – I don’t know. But it was really, really surprising and bad actually. And interesting,’ Cally said, with one of those trademark mushy nursery sentences, delivered with a slight scowl in an attempt to make it fit for public consumption.
‘Anyway, whichever it is, it’s double what the British Army actually is,’ Penny said.
‘I think it will come soon,’ Shannon said. ‘It will have to – we’ll send in the soldiers. I mean, what are the US and the UK armies for? All these tanks sitting in Germany in the middle of fields and there’s men and women dying, buildings getting dynamited.’
‘If we’ve got them, send them in,’ Bob said.
‘Bit of argy-bargy. We like a bit of that. Send in the Inter City Firm. The Headhunters!’ Von said.
‘The British Establishment would never risk a white soldier for the life of a Muslim child,’ Sara said.
I knew a couple of lads who’d joined up as squaddies after school. One who was so struck with the military he used to go jogging round Chirk – up to the castle and back with a rucksack half filled with house bricks. He didn’t have a particular admission requirement in mind, it was more like a declaration of intent, his twilight laps of the new estate. I never liked the kid. Long face, thin unkind lips. Nor his mate in joining up, Geraint. But still, thinking it might be their slim white limbs, their soft PE-shower bellies that took the bullets, I felt queasy cheering them in.
Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals Page 7
