by Jan Needle
He was looking at his screen. He was scrolling through and stopping. Then scrolling through again.
“Well the problem is, Hassan,” he said. “We don’t need bricklayers, do we? And anyway, what good’s a trowel when some Taliban comes at you in Kandahar? What good’s a hod against an IED?”
A grin spread on his face, then he clocked mine and stopped it. We stared at each other, and his mouth went back to normal.
“The point is,” he said, “you didn’t go to the recruiting office to become a plumber, did you, you went to serve your country. There’s a war on in Afghanistan, and if we don’t contain it there, they’ll bring it to the towns and streets of England, won’t they? Al Quida is the threat. However long it takes, we’ve got to beat it. Stop worrying about the future, soldier, and learn to be proud. You’re the backbone of your country.”
My mind was very cool now, but I’d given over arguing. I thought calmly: so I’m a backbone, what about me arms and legs? Even if I knew how bricks were laid I couldn’t lay them then, could I, how would I earn a living as a legless brickie? I tried to make a joke for him, to make him grin again, he’d started to look sort of sad. But I couldn’t think of a way to put it.
There was silence for what seemed a good long while – just dim shouting from the square outside, a buzzing fly. Then the OC made a funny noise, a kind of brisk sound, as if the time had come to move it on. Ah well, I thought. Let’s hear the worst. Glasshouse, would it be? Or Colchester, God forbleedingbid. Or just more punishment, more time as the sergeant’s bitch?
But he hadn’t finished yet completely, and he was still backtracking, in a way.
“Look, Tiny,” he said, “we need soldiers don’t we? That’s the bottom line. That’s why you joined up in the first place, I’m very sure of that, you were willing to risk your life – to lose it, even – for something that was right. And people around you now, people you don’t rate, rough people, bitter people, vicious people, even – well, you’ll be surprised, you’ll be astonished at how they will turn out. They’ll be soldiers. Some of them, believe me, will be heroes, fantastic, daring, terrific men. Good God, man, what’s the alternative? Hitler had to be fought, didn’t he? So did Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, the insurgents. Someone had to be prepared to make the sacrifice. Am I right or am I wrong?”
I wished I’d had Shahid in with me. He could’ve argued back. The trouble was I did believe him. It was just…
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I suppose.”
“And you suppose quite right, Hassan. The army’s vital, and you are the army. You serve a useful purpose as a common soldier, and don’t you let anybody tell you otherwise. You are a hero. Not potentially, but now. Because you’re here. Because you’re learning. Because you’ll be prepared, when push comes to shove, to give your all. Your life. Do you agree?”
Oh, what a lovely question. Oh, what a prat. A hero or a dead hero. Was there any difference? What could I say? What was there left for me to say?
“Please, sir,” I said. “What happens to me now? Is it the glasshouse? I’d really like to know, sir. Sorry.”
He shuffled papers. He studied his screen. He put his finger ends together, and he smiled.
“Tiny,” he said, “Potentially, I see you as a fine soldier – no, really, really fine. You’re so unusual, such an original sort of chap, compared with the normal run of squaddie. Play it right, and all this will be forgotten, I can promise you.” He tapped a single key with his finger, as if it was significant. He nodded, got dead serious. “It shouldn’t affect your future career in any way. How does that sound?”
Like bullshit. Like total bullshit. I didn’t say so, though.
“It’ll have to go on your record, of course,” he went on. “You understand that, don’t you? But I can see no reason why that should cause you any grief, it’s not even that unusual for certain lads to take time out these days. I’m very glad your father rang, though. I’m very glad he sent you back so promptly. And I’m inclined to believe you about that police girl, too. Like I said, I have you down as a good man, Tiny. Of great potential. Does that surprise you?”
It had surprised me that he even knew my name, quite honestly. But I knew the rules. I knew them better every day.
“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
“I have every confidence in you. I feel you’ll work through this problem patch and go from strength to strength. I also understand your point about missing your comrades, especially Private Khan. After what you’ve said he sounds very interesting. Yes. very.”
No mention of Ashton then, I noticed. But there’s black and black, ain’t there?
“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
He scratched his nose. Crunch time. Fine words, but now the punishment. I held me breath.
“I’m giving you a week’s home leave,” he said. He paused. “To get your head together. Does that sound fair?”
Fair? Fair? What could I say? ‘Yessir, thank you, sir’ didn’t really cover it, did it?
But I was in the British Army. What could I do?
“Yessir, thank you, sir,” I said.
And I mean that most sincerely, folks... I really do.
Here Comes the Bullet
One
The trouble with the army, is that nothing that you ever hear is true. Ever. In my time after basic training my mob were going – for definite – everywhere in the world that troops were stationed, and sometimes it changed three times a week. Afghanistan? Ireland? Iraq to sort out the shit we left there last time? – “yeah, deffo, it’s official.” Now the OC had told me we weren’t going off to war – which meant we were – and here I was on a bloody train to Blackburn to see me mum.
And I wasn’t on a charge, and the little crap-hat Jeff, Al Beano, Rick O’Shea, was not stone dead at all, but still alive and kicking in a civvie hospital.
Old Ken Rogers was dead for definite is what I’d heard first, and I’d got arseholed on the strength of it. Then Ken had told me it was Al, and this time it was for definite, he’d shot himself, “brains everywhere” – except he mustn’t’ve had none, because he missed. Fair enough by me an’ all – I didn’t want to see him dead, why should I? – although I was a bit pissed off. If he hadn’t topped himself, and made me think that he was Ken, I wouldn’t have got wrecked and done a runner, and I’d’ve saved myself a lot of mither. On the other hand I’d got a week buckshee, and he’d got his life back, also. Which in the army – was probably not so bleeding good. The one thing that it proved for sure is that nothing’s true, it’s all a load of testicles, just don’t believe a word the bastards say.
Anyway, the weather had dried up again, and the only black cloud on my horizon as the train clattered through the countryside was what line to shoot me mum and Vronnie. It’d only been about six weeks ago that I’d bullshitted I might be made up to lance quite soon, that everything was going great again, backtracking like a lunatic from being “negative.” And now I had a black mark on my record, I’d be lowlife from here to Kingdom Come, and it was only by some sort of luck I hadn’t been banged up for going AWOL. Oh Jesus – what if the Captain had rung up home to thank me “dad” in person for persuading me to go back? Oh Jesus, he still bloody might!
I stayed on until Manchester in the end, and I was wondering if to take the train back out again or go on the piss in town, when I saw some long fair hair I recognised – Emma. I called out, the way you do, and she turned round and smiled before I could regret it. She was in jeans and top and trainers and she looked so bleeding normal. I was in trackies and teeshirt, me, and scruffy as a tramp.
“Hi, Tiny. How you doing?”
“Hi. All right. You going home?”
“Yeah, been shopping. Coming on the train are you?”
So I made the big decision. Mum was half an hour away, and this girl who lived quite near our house was flirting, clear as daylight even to a prat like me, I couldn’t go wrong.
“Nah, I think I’ll stay in Manch,” I said, going wr
ong as usual. I did a funny little smile. “I got some leave. Few days to see some mates.”
She laughed.
“Suit yourself, general. Don’t fancy you in civvies, any case. Ooh, I love that hat you wear!”
She was being nice still, and I should have laughed, and I felt gutted as I watched her nice arse walk away and climb up on the train. I felt gutted, and I felt a sort of empty anger, too. And then I felt an utter dickhead, so I went into a bar and got a drink and rung up Shofiq. By the time I got to his place I was pissed. Which got me out of seeing mum if nothing else, din’t it?
I didn’t see her next day neither, as it happened, nor the next one or the next. In fact the honest truth is, I didn’t go home at all. Shof was living in a better part of Withington by now, a nice smart flat, and he had a nice smart girl-friend, too, a white girl called Sue. Me drunken bastard mate had gone legit, and when I sobered up they let me stay. Sue had a job, she had nice friends, and Shof was back at college, learning straight CT. Quite honestly, when I got a call from Sha and Ashton later in the week, it was a big relief. They’d finished in the south, they were coming back through Manch to have some drinking time, and were we going to meet? No way!
Naturally enough they were both pissed when they rung me, and you could hear them whooping down my mobile right across the flat. But there was no one there to bother except me, and I was out of there in minutes, and I didn’t leave a note. Not far to Whalley Range by bus, and so what if it was pissing down again and I didn’t have no coat? I was well ’ard, me – I was a soldier. And there’d be a floor to kip on, bound to be.
I had a funny sort of feeling, though, as I walked the last bit to the pub, it felt like there was something in the air. Shahid and Ashton drunk and noisy on the phone, little Carole in her bright white nightie with her legs tucked under her, so nice, so calm, so fucking kind, and Shofiq smart and sober in a proper flat, with Susie who tried to get me to ring my mum but only smiled when I said no. It felt like something weird was going on inside my head, and I didn’t fucking like it. Manchester was full of civvies, and it wasn’t Catterick.
I couldn’t make more sense of it than that.
Two
There was something in the air for all of us that night, though, and as we went from pub to pub to pub, it seemed to bug us more and more. Ash, instead of getting randy, for once got sort of thoughtful, for example. It felt like something was coming out of joint.
“Legalise Crime,” he said at one point, in response to absolutely bugger all. “That’s my family motto, and it’s the same for all us English blacks. It ain’t our idea – we gets forced into it. For two good reasons.”
“Oh aye,” said Shahid. “Like that gang of hophead thugs back there?” We had moved out sharpish from the last place and were sitting in another heaving pub room with more pints of lager, getting hammered fast. “Name them, nigger boy.”
Ashton pondered. He had a long weekend, he was on his home patch, and he’d get to shag his missus later on. He should have been delirious.
“Number One,” he said, “all whities think we’re criminals, which is rampant prejudice. And Number Two, they’re right. No don’t laugh, I fucking mean it. My Uncle Gilbert used to drive a bus when I were little, and he always called it his. How could he afford that on his wages? A great big Magic Bus? He couldn’t. He’d bloody knocked it off.”
Was it the booze, or was he mental? We forgot to laugh. But Ashton, of the three of us, was the honestest in actual fact – or at least he hardly ever bent the law like we did – and it was giving him a bit of trouble, hence the jokes. He was under pressure, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He might be getting in the shit.
The point was Sonia, the fiancée, had been down to visit him on the exercises, which should’ve been excellent. Except you don’t do that sort of thing, do you, unless you’ve got a secret reason. Ulterior motive, that’s what Shahid called it, and he was on the ball.
It was simple, really, when we got it out of him – she wanted him to quit. It was out of the blue to Ashton, a stroke of lightning, but logical to her, as clear as bleeding daylight. It was something to do with the way things were shaping in the ’Stan and crap, and (when he got it out of her) the marrying and babies and shite like that an’ all.
“She said I’d have no chance with her if I got my cock shot off,” he said, “which I reckon’s fair enough, but she also said she’d been speaking to my cousins, which bloody ain’t, it’s strictly out of order. She said they’d give me a job at any time, good money, cash in hand, and as safe as bleeding houses.”
“Nice work if you can get it, son,” said Shahid, “but you’re signed up for the full four years, ain’t you? Who does she think you are? Houdini? How does she think you’re getting out?”
“Catch Uncle Gilbert’s Magic Bus,” I said. No one laughed at that one, neither.
“Yeah, well I told her that, but she didn’t believe me, women never do, do they? When I tried to get out dead legit in me first three months they knocked me back, and Sonia thought that that were my fault, too. For once it wan’t, I were being straight, it were the army that was bent. I put me name down but they said I never did, or someone had lost the form or some such bollocks. And when I asked to go again they told me I was out of time, nobody’s fault but mine. You can’t argue with the office, can you? What’s the point?”
“So what’s your problem, then?” I asked. “She wants you to quit, but you can’t for three more years. You’ll still get your oats off her, don’t say you won’t, I don’t believe you.”
“But she thinks there’s ways and means. And she thinks I won’t try really, ’cause I don’t want her to pin me down. She thinks I think she’s out to trap me.”
“Oh come on, Ash, you can’t hardly wait, can you? And you can’t get out, no way. You can’t even do depression, you daft git!”
He smiled, and looked at his remaining mouthfuls. Ash couldn’t do depression, except in twenty minute bursts. No contest.
“Yeah, but there’s always other ways and means,” he said, “I guess she’s right at that. I mean, the thought of not having me legs blown off in Helmand’s not a bad one, when you think about it, and it can mess the sex about when your girlfriend thinks you’ve got a death wish, silly cow. It’s just the family bit that worries me. The family motto, like.”
“Gawd, you and your family motto,” Shahid said. He picked up the pots. “Same again, is it? I can take a bloody hint.”
Squaddies always talk about how you can get out, it’s one of them subjects that just comes up, like daytime telly and how bone the army is, and it don’t mean a lot most of the time. But this time I could feel it really nudging, and I didn’t really like it. Without Ash and Shahid in camp it had been terrible, and without Carole I’d probably be on the run by now, or more likely down Colchester in a cell.
More to the point, if Ash was thinking that way, you could be sure as shit that it was serious. Ash had a habit of getting things done, he didn’t piss about. He slid his empty glass across to be refilled.
“D’you think you could get out then, Ash?” I said, as Shahid disappeared into the ruck. “What ways and means? I can’t fucking think of none.”
He looked at me and grinned. Relaxed as a newt, or would be pretty soon.
“You’re too well brought up,” he said. “My problem’s this: what’s worse, the army – crap food and getting shot at by the maniacs – or working with my bleeding cousins. You know what they’re into, don’t you? Cars. Ringing. High class motors, bent. Sonia can’t see it, because they all wear classy suits, they don’t do drugs, and me auntie’s lovely! But I’m getting married soon, I’ve got me leave all booked. I don’t want to spend me wedding night in Strangeways.”
The trouble was with Ashton was, you never knew if he was joking, and when the lagers and the porky scratchings came, he didn’t seem bothered about carrying the conversation on. I asked Sha if he’d been thinking of leaving as well as Ash since th
ey’d been away down in the south, but he just shrugged.
“He talked about it, didn’t he?” he said. “But why now? What’s changed for me? I don’t have no gorgeous white girl down on her knees begging me to quit. Down on her knees begging me for anything, more to the point. I’m a puritan, remember, I’ve been ruined by mad mullahs, I’m damn near a sex-free zone. Put it another way – situation normal. Same shit, different day.”
“Well I dunno,” I said. “I mean, I know where you’re coming from, but I must say I feel different, kinda sort of, I feel like something might’ve changed.” I paused. Picked up my new pint and chucked some down my neck. “Apart from anything else, I think I’m drinking myself to death. I’m serious. I’m losing days, Sha, I don’t know if I’m on my tits or arsehole sometimes. I’m all fucked up.”
“Like I said,” he said. “Situation normal.”
But he didn’t laugh. He turned his head to Ashton.
“Are you still glad you signed up, nigger boy? Are you still…well, proud, like? To be in the army?”
Proud? What a word to use. But Ashton didn’t fall about and spill his beer, surprisingly. In fact he held his pint up and looked at it as if it had some answers.
“In a way,” he said. “I didn’t realise what shit the money would turn out to be, like, and the government needs shooting for their fucking lies, but someone’s got to do it, haven’t they? And if it’s either this or nicking Beamers, I dunno. I might stay in, whatever the ’ausfrau says. It keeps me off the streets.”
Shahid was clocking me.
“You was quite chuffed with it when I first got to know you, Ti,” he said. “You’d got fit, and off the dope, and you was the best shot in your company. If it’s shit now it was just the same shit when you joined, weren’t it? So what’s changed? It or you?”
