by Phil Earle
He didn’t seem to like the question, let his gaze drop as he wrestled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his fatigues, which didn’t make a lot of sense: Jammy didn’t smoke. Mind you, him smoking seemed like the least of the things I needed answers to.
‘Mate, where have you been?’ I asked, throwing myself into his arms again and squeezing hard. Not much came back. ‘We’ve been doing our nut about everything. Thought you might be back for today, what with Tomm being … well, you know.’
My head flicked back to what I thought I’d seen through the hearse window. I couldn’t let it pass. ‘You weren’t at the parade today … were you?’
His eyes told me one thing and his mouth another. ‘Course not. I was meant to be, but they let me down. Didn’t get me here till an hour ago.’
‘So why didn’t you ring us? You must have a hundred missed calls.’
‘Phone’s broke. Just as well by the sounds of it. Not sure I could cope with all the questions.’ He tried a smile, but it didn’t settle. He just looked sad, among other things.
In fact, he didn’t look like Jamm at all. He looked tired, properly wasted, but that wasn’t a surprise if he’d been travelling. Add on everything with Tomm and you could forgive him the creases on his face. But he just didn’t look right. Didn’t have his own uniform on for starters; it looked like he’d picked a bigger one off the peg by mistake. I remembered what basic training had done to him, leaving his arms almost bursting through the seams. But now it sagged at the shoulders, like someone had pricked him with a pin. His punching ability was unaffected, though; it felt like I’d been whacked with an iron bar.
‘You’re bleeding.’ He pointed at my mouth. No offer of a tissue or anything approaching sympathy.
‘Well, you didn’t exactly give me time to defend myself, did you?’
It was the first time he’d ever laid a hand on me like that. All right, there’d been scraps, handbags at dawn, but never this. And if I’m honest, it rocked me, my mouth running off stupidly.
‘Can’t be the first blood you’ve seen lately either.’
He took a long draw on his cigarette, his hand shaking as it fell.
God, what a stupid thing to say.
‘Ignore me,’ I cringed. ‘That was dumb. I’m just a bit freaked out. We’ve been … well, it’s been … difficult. You know what I mean, don’t you?’
He nodded, didn’t need me to go on; I saw a pain that outstretched mine by a mile. Whatever was playing out in his head, I wasn’t sure I could cope with knowing about it. Not today.
‘How’s everyone? Cam OK?’ He looked at the clock on the wall and frowned. ‘Maybe I should go see her.’
‘She’s sleeping,’ I stumbled, realizing that might sound a bit weird. I should’ve left it at she’s tired, or she’s with her mum. How would I know that kind of detail unless I’d seen it? Would he guess something was going on?
Man, I was tired. My paranoia levels were going mental. I was almost glad when the front door slammed to interrupt us, although the clatter put Jamm back on edge. He’d heard that noise all his life: the door was so warped with age you had to give it a whack to get it shut. But tonight it was enough to have him twitching and stalking towards the hall.
‘Relax. It’ll only be M–’
But words weren’t necessary as Mum appeared in the doorway, her legs buckling like Cam’s at the parade when she caught sight of Jammy.
She spoke, her words mangled so badly by tears that I hadn’t a clue what she said. She stumbled into him, eyes wide like he was an apparition, arms clinging to his uniform as she wept on his shoulder, repeating again and again ‘you’re home’.
I was relieved for her, for Jamm, for us all, but the gnarly bit of my head couldn’t resist twisting it, shouting that I mattered even less now. Now he was a war hero.
I pushed the resentment away, hating myself for even thinking it.
‘Do you have any idea how much I’ve thought about this?’ she asked him, hands cupping his face, eyes scanning him for injuries. You’d have thought he was a kid who’d fallen off his bike, not a squaddie home from war.
‘Me too, Mum.’ He always did say the right thing.
‘And are you all right? You’ve lost weight. Are you hurt? Do we need to change dressings or anything?’
‘Do I look injured?’
Worry flashed across her face but she was hardly going to tell him he looked like death. She’d put him straight by feeding him within an inch of his life. He’d be in elasticated trousers within a week.
‘You look tired. When did you last sleep? Or eat?’
‘I’ve not stopped eating since we hit the UK. The chocolate over there is rubbish.’
She grabbed him by the hand and pretended to scold him, slapping at his palm as she walked him towards the kitchen.
‘Well, that’s no good, is it? Let me make you something. We should have a drink. I would’ve had more in if we’d known … we should have been sorted … organized a party, or something.’
Jamm’s face fell. A shadow covering all of it.
‘And who would we invite?’ he asked, words emotionless. ‘Cam and her folks?’
Mum covered her mouth with her hands like she was trying to cram the idea back in. ‘I’m sorry, love, I didn’t think.’
But then Jamm did something I’d never seen before. Something I never thought he’d ever do. He laid into her. ‘No, really, it’s a great idea,’ he spat, reaching for the phone. ‘Let’s give them a buzz and get them over. Larry’s bound to have a bottle of something cheap. We can all have a glass while I tell them how I killed their son.’
Silence. Just the sound of Jamm’s breath from the exertion. Mum flushed bright red, then stepped towards him, arms held out.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like it sounded. I’m just so relieved.’ Her eyes filled up but it didn’t help. ‘We didn’t know what had happened. I thought they weren’t telling us something, maybe something had happened to you too.’
‘Do I look injured?’ he yelled.
I told him to calm down and for a moment thought there was a second fist coming my way. But instead he kept his focus on Mum and carried on his rant.
‘I’m fine, aren’t I? And know why? Because bullets slide off me. I’m invincible. That’s why they got Tomm instead. Because of me.’
Maybe it was his aggression, but that comment ignited Mum’s fire too.
‘Hey, that’s enough of that! Everyone knows what you did for Tommo. How you shot back, how you tried to keep him alive. It’s not just us that knows it either. It’s Cam and her folks, everyone on the estate knows what a hero you …’
‘Don’t you dare call me that!’ he roared, voice catching in the back of his throat. ‘Not to me or anyone else. Because that’s not who I am. You hear me?’
It’s not often I find myself silent. More often than not I’m the one spewing that kind of bile, waiting for a carpeting from Jamm for my efforts. But there was no way I was going to tell him to calm down. My mouth was still stinging from ten minutes ago.
Instead I stood, slack-jawed, as he turned and ran past me in the direction of our room. A gust of wind whipped us both as the door swung shut, blowing me to Mum’s side, holding her up as she sobbed.
Jammy McGann was home and safe, but it wasn’t the glorious homecoming any of us had hoped for.
Sonny
We sat for a while, Mum and me.
But no matter how many times she asked me, I didn’t have an answer to the question that troubled her most.
Do you think he’s OK?
My head was too mashed to know what my own name was, never mind anything else. So I sat there and listened, filling Mum’s cup when it was empty, nodding at what I hoped were the right bits. In the end, though, I could feel my nose edging closer to the table and she insisted I took myself off to bed.
But as I headed to our room, Jamm was coming the other way, towards Mum. I stopped, wondered if I should follow him, but
after a pat on my shoulder (it beat another right hook) and a ‘Sorry, pal’ I decided to keep on walking. The walls were thin enough to listen in if I wanted to anyway.
I didn’t spend the next half-hour with a cup to the wall, but the conversation seemed to take a far less shouty route. It wasn’t without emotion: Mum’s sobbing filled the whole flat, but it was Jammy’s responses that brought the relief. No yelling or explosions, just the even tone that we were all used to. It allowed me to lie on my bed, rather than pace the floor, and think about what it meant to have him home.
I suppose most sixteen-year-olds would be hacked off to lose the privacy of their own room, but sharing a room with Jamm had never bothered me. The council weren’t in the habit of dishing out three-bedroom gaffs with en-suites, so this was how it had always been. In fact, I’d slept way worse while Jamm had been away. There was no humming from the bunk above to hypnotize me and after sixteen years I missed it. I reckon if I hadn’t replaced that with Cam’s breath whistling in my ear, I wouldn’t have had a decent night in the whole time he’d been gone.
I had got a bit weird about Jamm’s bunk while he was away. I don’t know if it was superstition, but I hadn’t let anyone sleep or lie on it. Wiggs had crashed over a few times and looked at me like I was a loon when I told him he had to sleep on the floor. He was even unhappier when I stopped him using Jammy’s duvet, instead giving him a scratchy blanket that looked like it had been knitted from barbed wire.
Even when Cam stayed and we had the option of creating a double mattress on the floor, I chose not to. Not because of the ‘no sisters’ pact; it just didn’t feel right. As long as Jamm’s bunk stayed intact and where it was, then somehow he was going to be all right.
Staring at the underside of his mattress, hearing his muffled voice from underneath the door, was enough to rock me gently and force my brain to finally switch off.
That should’ve been it. Eight hours of unbroken bliss. But it wasn’t, because just as the night was at its darkest, I was rocketed awake by a scream from above.
I sat bolt upright, grazing my skull on the slats of Jamm’s bunk. There wasn’t time to think about the pain, though, as the noise above me filled my head.
What made it worse was that the racket came with movement: a rocking that sent the bunks swaying like a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic. Fearing we were about to topple over, I staggered to the floor and peered at Jamm’s bunk. I couldn’t make much out, but I could see his outline, duvet tangled around him, squeezing him like a snake as he writhed and bucked. I had no idea what he was dreaming about; wasn’t sure I wanted to know either.
It’s hard to think clearly in the middle of the night when your head’s screaming for sleep, but I couldn’t ignore him. I could’ve pulled my duvet through to the lounge, but there was no way I could leave him. There was too much violence in his movements. So, climbing the ladder, I tried to separate him from his sheets.
The duvet clung to him like ivy, and my clumsy fingers seemed to only tie him up tighter. The only option was to roll him and hope he unravelled that way, but as my fingers made contact with his burning-hot shoulders, it broke him from his dream, eyes flying open, pupils glowing in the dark.
I’m sure someone told me once that it’s dangerous to wake people when they’re dreaming, that it can mess with their head. Well, in that second, I wished I’d listened, as without warning Jamm’s arms shot towards me, his hands wrapping around my throat as we tumbled from the bunk to the carpet below. The impact winded me, but there wasn’t time to whine or whinge. If I didn’t get him off me quickly, I wouldn’t have the breath to make any noise at all.
I tried to tell him it was me, but got nowhere. My gasping didn’t reach him. So I had no option but to fight back, ramming my hands under his chin and trying to force his head back to break his grasp. At first I thought it might work, his hands weakening enough to let a shot of air down my throat. But with a vicious shake of his head, he broke free, leaning right into my face as his hands tightened again.
‘You killed him,’ he spat. ‘You killed him.’
Fear flooded me: I hadn’t a clue who this was I was fighting. Jamm’s dog-tags were dangling on my face as he squeezed, but this wasn’t my brother.
‘Jamm. Let go. Let go!’
His cheeks bulged with exertion as his knuckles strained harder.
‘I should’ve done this weeks ago,’ he was hissing. ‘For killing him. For killing Wayne.’
Who? There were plenty of kids knocking about on the Ghost called that, but none we’d had any issue with.
‘It’s me, Jamm. It’s me. It’s Sonny. Look!’
I saw his eyes widen, adding to the madness, before narrowing again. There was no sign of life or love anywhere in them. It was like he was on autopilot, doing what he had to do, what I guessed the army had trained him to do. Kill.
I just couldn’t understand why it had to be me.
It was getting desperate, his thumbs pressing harder on to my Adam’s apple. I felt the room darken. I had one last chance to get him off me. It wasn’t the kind of move I wanted to pull, but he left me with no choice. So with every single ounce of strength I had, I swung my right arm, slamming it hard into his kidneys.
The effect was instant. With a howl, he rolled to the side, and I gave him another shove before wriggling away, to the other side of the room.
As I crouched against the radiator, lungs heaving and sweating furiously, I watched him roll around, words spewing from his mouth. At times I heard that name again. Wayne. Or thought I did. It was so mixed up in other mutterings that I might have got it all wrong.
A minute passed, then two, his body straightening, becoming still. Part of me wanted to rush over, check he was OK, but the survivor in me said no way, I didn’t fancy feeling that power again.
Instead I waited until his only movements were the slow, constant risings of his chest, hard evidence that he was asleep. Then, and only then, I tiptoed over, draping his duvet over him before returning for my own. Wrapping it around me to squash my shaking, I headed for the door. There was no way I was sleeping in there tonight. Not until I had a clue what was going on.
Instead I walked past Mum’s door, fighting the urge to wake her and tell her what had just happened.
Would she believe me?
Think I’d provoked him?
Probably.
It was the only answer I needed to keep me walking straight past her room into the lounge, jamming a chair behind the door.
It had been the longest and worst day of my life. No way was I making it worse by allowing my brother, or whoever that was in there, to finish me off properly.
Sonny
I woke to three things:
An unfamiliar bed (well, a settee)
A cricked neck (caused by number 1)
A raging hunger (caused by the most ridiculously overpowering smell of food from the kitchen).
Numbers one and two were sort of forgotten thanks to number three. I presumed the smell of food had been made by Mum, backed up by her face half hidden behind a pile of bacon sandwiches.
‘You never cooked like this when it was just you and me,’ I grunted, then felt bad, remembering her tears.
‘Wasn’t me this morning either,’ she answered. ‘You can thank your brother.’
The mention of Jamm shook the remains of sleep off me.
Instinctively, my hands went to my neck. Was it sore, bruised? It’d explain how stupidly stiff it felt.
‘Slept funny?’
There was a lot I could’ve told her then, but settled for a nod and a little bit of the truth. ‘Kipped on the settee.’
‘Why did you do that?’
I shrugged, building up the lie in my head. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ Unlikely after yesterday, but it was all I had. ‘Didn’t want to keep Jamm awake, so I got my head down in the lounge.’
She stared at me with a look I wasn’t used to. I couldn’t be sure, but I think she might have been impre
ssed. ‘You big softie,’ she laughed, reaching for a sandwich. ‘You want to be careful behaving like this. People might start thinking you like them.’
‘I’m not a complete horror show, you know.’
She laughed at me. ‘Obviously. But I reckon you’ve got Cam to thank for that.’
I said nothing. Why was it I wanted everyone to know about us (I’d tie a gigantic banner between the high rises so I didn’t have to sneak around any more), but as soon as my own mother made reference to it I wanted to hide behind a mountain of bread and pig? I made a note to have a word with myself later on, when I’d finally stopped blushing.
‘You know, you’re going to have to mention it to Jamm at some point, about you and Cameron.’
‘What about us?’
How lame did that sound?
‘Oh, give over, Sonny. I know all about the pact you boys have about sisters.’
‘Do you?’
‘You think I sit here and cover my ears when you talk all your rubbish? I could humiliate you all for the rest of your lives, the stuff I’ve heard over the years.’
My head scrambled, thinking about the other gems she could’ve picked up. She could probably have filled a book with them. Still, if she had heard, then she might be able to help me this time.
‘And how do you reckon Jamm’ll react? You know, when we tell him?’
She thought about it for a good couple of mouthfuls, only answering when she’d washed them down with a glug of tea. ‘He’s just spent three months in the worst place on earth. He’s seen things that we clearly haven’t a clue about, and to make it worse, he’s had his best mate die in his arms. I’d have thought you snogging Tommo’s sister will barely scratch the surface, to be honest.’
It wasn’t often she put me at ease, but she’d managed it this time, letting me return to Jammy as the topic of conversation. I wanted to know if he’d freaked her out last night too.
