The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

by Victoria Hendry

  A dog brushed past him barking. He looked up and saw a Staffie bull terrier run at a girl’s Papillon. She bent to scoop up her lap-dog, his little butterfly ears flapping in the breeze as he barked at the Staffie barrelling towards him. ‘Don’t pick him up,’ Archie yelled. He ran towards her. ‘Drop him,’ he shouted, but the Staffie had reached her and was springing at her arms, snapping at the small dog. The bull terrier caught her sleeve, turning into a wild beast focused on its prey. The switch had flicked – pet/wolf, wolf/pet. Archie reached her and struck the Staffie on the back of its neck with a clenched fist, kicking it hard as it fell, and grabbing its collar.

  An old lady was approaching. ‘Well I never,’ she said. ‘He’s normally so sweet. I’m walking him for a friend in hospital.’ She clipped on the dazed dog’s lead. ‘Are you quite alright, dear?’ she asked the dog, and pulled him away, ignoring the girl.

  ‘How about an apology?’ the girl shouted after her. ‘He could have ripped me to shreds. What are you going to do about my jacket?’

  Archie watched the old woman retreat. ‘Just leave it,’ he said. ‘She’s not worth it. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to pick up a dog in an attack?’

  ‘Or jump into water for a drowning man?’

  He smiled, and looked down. He didn’t want her to see his eyes. He didn’t want her to shrink away if she glimpsed his inner landscape on this bright day.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked. ‘As a thank you?’

  He nodded. ‘So what are you doing out so early,’ she asked, as she led him towards a café on the edge of the park, ‘if you’re not a dog walker?’

  ‘Thinking,’ he replied. ‘Trying to clear my head.’

  ‘Any luck?’ she asked.

  He looked at her for a second. ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘You’re quite the macho man,’ she said. ‘Like Tarzan. Thanks for saving me from Granny and her killer mutt.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he replied. He felt peaceful, as if the violence had cleared something in him, a tension that lived in his muscles, roasted at the back of his head.

  They had reached a small café. ‘Greasy spoon, okay?’ she asked, pushing open the door. ‘It’s my usual stop for sustenance.’

  ‘Luxury,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I was on my way to St Philomena’s.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that where they feed the homeless?’

  He nodded, embarrassed, as he sat down.

  ‘How long have you been volunteering there?’

  He paused, wrong-footed by her assumption. ‘Not long,’ he said, picking up a menu covered in photos of eggs, bacon and sausages. The picture-book mushrooms dripped butter and the tomatoes were grilled. Tea and toast. He swallowed the saliva that had flooded his mouth.

  ‘Have the full breakfast,’ she said, ‘if you like. I owe you.’

  He shook his head, afraid to show her his hunger. ‘I’ll have what you’re having,’ he replied.

  She wandered over to the counter and exchanged a few words with the man behind it as he put two egg rolls on a tray and added two mugs of tea. She paid him and wandered over to Archie at a small table by the window.

  ‘So what do you do?’ she asked, stirring sugar into her tea. ‘When you’re not feeding the homeless?’

  ‘I’m into … fitness,’ he said.

  ‘Like a personal trainer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re so buff.’

  ‘I run classes on the Meadows,’ he continued, marching with the lie.

  ‘Oh, I know someone who’s looking for one. She’s fighting the flab but losing the battle. What’s your company called?’

  ‘Slim … Slim for Jesus,’ he said, spotting a picture of Jesus baring his beating heart on the wall behind the till. ‘Slim for Jesus.’ He hoped it would put her off. ‘I have a Facebook page if she wants to sign up, but it’s two hundred pounds.’

  ‘Well, it’s going to take a miracle to get her fit,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll let her know.’ Her dog strolled over to the plastic tub of water by the door and spooned it up with his pink tongue. Archie watched him, remembering the dogs who had run in among the troops as they cleared the ghost towns on their patrol, and adopted them with hopeful barks, whining as they moved off towards the Green Zone. A strange sing-song of regret.

  The girl finished her roll and stood up, wiping her lips. She hadn’t seemed to notice his eyes. ‘Maybe see you again,’ she said, and raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Archie,’ he said.

  She held out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Archie. I’m Sooze. Short for Suhaylah.’

  As the door closed behind her, he turned over a paper and read the front page. President Assad was smiling in his sharp suit, happy that Russia had extended him a lifeline following his alleged use of gas against civilians. Obama wasn’t going to launch a strike against him if he decommissioned his chemical weapons, the weapons Obama said crossed a red line. A red line that demanded action from the international community. The House of Commons had voted against another military action. Thank fuck, he thought. There’s a ‘Russian plan for Syria,’ the paper announced, but Obama wanted it in days or weeks, and Putin and Assad said it would be months. So the old tick-tock of diplomacy that took Syria closer to America’s strike, which Obama said would not be a pinprick, chuntered on, and Archie wondered if anyone remembered the people on the ground: the ants scurrying for the borders before they closed, before the water dried up in desert lands, groaning under the weight of refugees sliding on the dunes. He tasted the sand in his mouth, smelled the odour of unwashed bodies, and of rotting corpses torn by dogs. He swallowed. ‘Another tea, mate,’ he called across the room before he remembered he couldn’t pay for it. He stood up and pulled out his empty pockets. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No change.’ The guy behind the counter brought the pot over anyway. ‘It’s probably a bit stewed,’ he said, pouring a dark stream of liquid into Archie’s cup. ‘Put in a bit more milk and it’ll taste fine. Unless you want mint?’

  Archie shook his head.

  ‘Didn’t think so,’ said the man with a smile. ‘I’m Karim,’ he said.

  ‘Archie.’

  ‘Bad business,’ he said.

  ‘Bit of a bun fight,’ replied Archie, ‘especially now Al Qaeda seems to be in the mix.’

  ‘I meant with the dog,’ said Karim.

  ‘Oh,’ said Archie. His finger was resting on a picture of a statue of the Virgin Mary looking down on the ruins of the town of Aleppo.

  ‘John the Baptist’s dad Zachary is buried there,’ said Karim.

  ‘I really don’t care,’ said Archie.

  Karim stepped back. ‘Three things,’ he said. ‘I overheard you talking – I thought you were into that Christian kick with your Slim for Jesus gig; second, I’m Syrian; and third, your attitude leaves something to be desired.’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ He downed the cup of tea.

  Karim pointed to another picture. ‘The Voyager spacecraft has left the Solar System. They launched it in 1977. Kind of puts it in perspective, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’ asked Archie. ‘Is that how this works? Men in flares build a floating camera and push it off the planet, and we’re meant to think nothing matters here.’

  ‘Do you have any better ideas?’ asked Karim. ‘Do you know how to kill the pain when you’re tied to your country, and it’s going down the tube, and there’s nothing you can do to break those ties because they’re wrapped tight round your heart?’

  ‘Woah,’ exhaled Archie. ‘Let’s turn the page.’ He stood up. ‘I have to go,’ he said. Karim’s emotion was unsettling him, tightening up the release he had felt after punching the dog.

  3

  Archie wanted to say that the nuns at St Philomena’s were nice to him, but they patted him on the arm and made him feel small again.
He felt guilty having a second breakfast and ate it too fast, stuffing toast down his throat. ‘God bless you, son,’ said a nun, patting him on the back as he choked and spat the bread back up in a soggy bolus. He put it on the corner of his plate and then dropped it under the table.

  ‘That’s clarty, man,’ said a young guy opposite him.

  Archie stood up and then sat back down, trying to slow his breathing.

  ‘That’s like a weapon of fucking mass destruction, man. Germs. You can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Funny,’ said the nun, coming back over and pulling the young guy’s ear. She spritzed diluted bleach from a plant spray over the table and rubbed it in with a cloth. Her bust shook beneath her tight, blue top, and the cross dangling from her neck swung over the food in blessing. She bent down and picked up the chewed food in a green paper towel before firing it across the room into a bin. ‘I never miss,’ she said, and looked at Archie. ‘Bull’s-eye.’

  ‘Do you have a copy of the Bible I could have,’ he asked, thinking of his bogus Facebook page, and added, ‘please, Sister?’

  She smiled and said, ‘There are some through the back.’

  He followed her along a corridor to a room lined with wooden panelling. There was a space on the wall above the fire-place where a picture had been removed. He assumed it was the Cardinal who had resigned. He remembered seeing the spokesman for a gay campaign group stoning him with words outside the cathedral. He remembered other stonings. He was trapped in the sand of his memories, his death’s head face staring out across the barren landscape of his life bled dry. ‘Where is he now?’ he asked, pointing to the bright patch of wallpaper on the faded wall.

  The nun looked over to the space and pursed her lips. ‘You wanted a Bible,’ she said. ‘You could have this one. It’s in good condition. Try and keep it that way.’

  He nodded and flicked through the pages. An inky hand had written, ‘To dear Moira on the occasion of your reception into the Faith.’ It had a capital F. ‘F for faith,’ he said.

  The nun nodded and locked the cabinet again. ‘God bless you,’ she said, making the sign of the cross over him. His eyes followed her finger, a target sight. The criss-cross hairs were across her face. The shot would be her lips. He saw the blood spray out of the back of her head. No one would notice it on the plum, flock wallpaper, a red miasma soaked up by those furry, little faces that stared from old walls in the night and woke the sleepers.

  ‘Is something funny?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not at all.’ He turned on his heel and swung away down the corridor to the blinding light of the day. Another one. The thoughts tumbled after him, escaping under the door of the convent, pressing themselves flat to slide after him. He tried to out-walk them. ‘I don’t need to do this,’ he said to himself. ‘I don’t need to think these things. I am in control of my own mind.’ But they raced along with him laughing, clinging to his shoes, which became desert boots on the grass, which became sand. He reached a wall round the new development of flats, looked up at the old hospital balconies where patients used to smoke looking out towards the Meadows, over the Pentland Hills to the south, contemplating their treatment and the short hand Fate had dealt them. He looked at the stone blocks in the wall, the crumbling mortar. Moss clung to the pitted surface: grey-green lichen glued in moon craters. The thoughts were climbing back into his mind. He placed both his hands against the wall and banged his head hard. It began to bleed. Someone behind him screamed.

  ‘What?’ he shouted, turning round. ‘Fucking what?’ He drove his forehead into the wall again, and staggered away, up Middle Meadow Walk. A woman was on her mobile phone, one hand on her buggy with a child squirming round to see the funny man with the red face. She moved her hand to her child’s eyes, and covered them.

  He passed a man playing a guitar, danced a few steps, and the music followed him along the path, past university students who stepped onto the cycle lane to let him pass. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ He stopped, wiped his head on his sleeve and looked at the blood, there on his arm, an old friend. He licked it, tasted the salt and iron on his tongue and ran it over his lips. There was a gents’ toilet at the top of the Walk, and he slipped down its mossy steps into a dark den that smelled of pee. The white tiles were cracked and an enamel sign above the single sink read, ‘Others may be waiting.’ He splashed his face with cold water and tried to clean his jacket with a wet, green paper towel. There was no soap left in the dispenser. He remembered the bars of soap his wife, Hannah, used to buy, with rosemary leaves trapped like lice in glycerine; the sharp scent of tea-tree oil. He pressed the flaky, metal bar of the dispenser again as if it were a slot machine, and pressing it fast enough would deliver the jackpot. The word ‘yes’ had been stencilled onto one of the tiles, and underneath it read ‘to Scottish Independence’. Yes. If yes is the answer, he thought, what is the question, and he looked in the mirror. ‘Am I a worthless, fucking dick?’ His eyes flicked to the stencil. Yes. ‘Am I a fucking criminal?’ Eye-flick. Yes. ‘A bad husband?’ Yes. ‘A shit reservist?’ Yes. ‘Is life worth living?’ Yes. ‘No. No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no. Wrong fucking answer.’

  The police were waiting for him when he came out, blinking like a mole, a surrendered soldier from his bunker. He put his arms in the air. ‘The answer is not yes,’ he said to the officer who cuffed him.

  ‘Whatever you say, sir. We’re not arresting you, but you understand that you have caused these good people some alarm. The cuffs are just a precaution. We’ll get them off as soon as possible.’ A small crowd had gathered. ‘We’re going to take you down to the station and get you sorted out.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, as he was put in the car, and his blood dripped on the seat. ‘Sorry.’

  He blew his last breath into the breathalyser.

  ‘Negative,’ the officer said to his partner.

  ‘Negative, Captain,’ Archie parroted, and spiralled away, to the sound of the chopper-blade car engine, the siren wail.

  4

  The doctor at the station was young and black. ‘Shall we start with your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Forbes. Archie Forbes.’

  ‘Archibald?’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding? I still have my own hair.’

  The doctor’s pen stopped moving. ‘The custody officer is concerned about you and called me. I’m part of a trial quick-response team. I need you to cooperate.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Archi-bald.’

  ‘Now, Mr Forbes,’ the doctor said. ‘My name is Dr Clark. I’m going to give you a statutory medical and take a short history from you. I’ll need to take a little blood to do a more thorough alcohol test, but we can do that at the end. Is that alright with you?’

  Archie nodded.

  ‘So, we’ll do urinalysis, blood pressure, height, weight, audiometry, spirometry, visual acuity, skin assessment, lifestyle screening, and I’ll give you a few stitches for that head wound before it dries out too much. Is that acceptable? Paper stitches should be fine. We’ll also think about some medication to keep you on an even keel. Help you out a bit, till things settle down. OK?’ He lifted his pen. ‘Address?’

  ‘None,’ said Archie.

  ‘Emergency contact?’

  ‘You could try my ex-wife, although I doubt she’d care if I copped it.’

  ‘Divorced?’

  ‘Separated.’

  ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Oh, about a month after I got back from Afghanistan.’

  ‘Service record? Army?’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  ‘Rank?’

  ‘Lieutenant. TA Reservist. Weekend warrior called from my desk by Queen and country.’

  ‘So you saw service?’

  ‘You could call it that.’

  ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘I don’t call it anything
. I call it ask Bradley.’

  ‘Bradley Manning.’

  ‘Chelsea Manning.’

  ‘Right, the whistle-blower. Moving on,’ said Dr Clark.

  ‘Yeah, let’s do that,’ said Archie, ‘Let’s move on, except it’s not so fucking simple is it? Moving on. Bet you’ve seen some shit. Where are you from? Zimbabwe, Rwanda?’

  ‘Peterborough. Let’s talk about you, okay? Parents?’

  ‘One dead, one indifferent.’

  ‘Date of birth?’

  ‘Thirty-two in April. Sixteen, four, nineteen eighty-two. The litany of numbers. Life’s lucky dip. Dip, dippity dip. Born in the marvellous era of Mrs T and her glorious naval battle for a rock in the South Atlantic. It’s all about controlling the sea. Empire, you know. You should know all about that. Fruit of the vine …’

  ‘Let’s stick to the point,’ said Dr Clark.

  ‘Shame she’s not here for Gibraltar,’ said Archie.

  ‘I’m going to get you a cup of tea and leave you to calm down. I want you to try to focus while I’m gone. You want to get out of here, don’t you?’

  Archie looked round the walls of the cell. They were thick, shut out a lot of stuff. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I like it here. Bed’s not too bad.’ He squashed the blue, plastic mattress. ‘Could do with a few more springs, a bit of spirology.’