Phone

by Will Self

  with his essays, words wouldn’t just him obey. Him just words

  obey wouldn’t … He sits, blinking at the blinking on-screen cursor,

  fixated by all the sharp edges of the screen architecture – and the

  virtual shadows they cast. He sits, dirty and sweating … I could

  murder a beer, conscious that here, in this little bivouac of light, I’ve

  met my Portaloo … The night-time sounds of Camp Val emanate

  from the outer darkness: the nearby muttering of troopers on

  drag-stag, the hubba-hubba of the generators, the distant yelp of

  the dog pack that gathers outside the walls every evening because

  once – and only once! – some utterly bone trooper on cookhouse

  duties … tossed out some bones. Bessemer and Hodges have long

  since gone – the ‘copter bearing them clattering away to the

  south – yet everything Gawain’s sore eyes settle on – pencils, paper

  clips, a gonk mascot dangling from the computer monitor … by its

  no-neck – flinches, as if the rotors … as if the rotors’re about to hit it …

  Asif! His Rams, he thinks, performed well enough – after the

  intitial shock there’d been no panic: Brit casualties and Iraqi dead

  were loaded into the vehicles, and the ‘copter was waiting for them

  at Camp Val. There’d been a little confusion – Pythian shouting to

  the loadie: We’ve another one here for you! while the paramedics

  hauled the stretchers out from the aypeesees, squatting down to

  fiddle with tubes and spigots and dressings. A few minutes later the

  ‘copter plumped up its cushion of dust, hovered for a moment over

  the main gate, then swung round, began spitting out chaff and

  romped away over the rooftops. Watching from one of the main

  gate sangars, Tizer had bellowed: Contact! Bloody contact! But

  it’d all been over before Gawain reached him: according to Tizer, a

  single heat-seeking sam had come scooting up from the east and,

  locking on to some chaff, swerved hard right and disappeared

  amongst the tumbledown shacks and vegetable plots along the

  riverbank without – so far as he could tell – detonating. But it was

  a sam, Tizer – you’re ABSOLUTELY BLOODY CERTAIN

  ABOUT THAT? – For fuck’s sake, Greeny, get outta my fucking

  face! You trying to snog me, or what? It was only then that Gawain

  had realised: he’d backed Major Townshend right up against the

  parapet and was spittling his cheeks. The mess that evening had

  been subdued … truculent: two men down, and the Rams first

  combat casualties in decades. They need us here more than ever,

  Gawain had said, his hand shaking, tomato soup making bloody

  bullet wounds on the tabletop. Yeah, Tizer grunted, it certainly

  sounds like it … They’d both stopped spooning – soaring eerily

  above the generators had come this uncanniness: the sound of a

  sizeable proportion of Ali al-Garbi’s female population, who’d

  gathered outside the main gates, beyond the tee-barrier, and were

  ululating … all the grief they’d got. It’s as if, Tizer said, they’re

  trying to raise him from the dead with this hocus-pocus … As

  if– not Asif al-Sayyab … and Gawain had been grim: No one gives

  a shit about him, Tizer – they’re here for the detainees in the

  TeeDeeEff. No one gives a shit about a lousy traitorous ’terp – a

  mouthpiece for the hated Crusaders … No, and now that mouthpiece

  was stopped up with sand, while a ball of dried earth had

  been placed beneath his tight and dusty curls, and a carefully folded

  Sunderland EffSee tracksuit top laid at his bare feet – how much

  do I actually know about Islam and the Muslims? Not much, he’d

  thought at supper – and reacknowledges now: ‘sides the fact they’ve

  gotta be planted within twenty-four hours of getting … slotted.

  Gawain hits the return key – I hit the return key: the grimy and

  depressed little return key – and the email whooshes into the

  darkness, a dinky tip-tilting envelope which fades into a faintly

  oscillating after-presence: a tiny circlet crowning the screen, which

  spins and spins, again annagain … But it will return – of that much

  he’s certain. Return before tomorrow, when the rugby tournament

  is due to kick off … with Japanese and New Zealander teams

  battling it out with sevens from … all the home nations. At least,

  that was the plan until today: when the Wimmik roared back

  into the compound that afternoon, the first thing Gawain had seen

  were some of the Japanese contractors practising behind the mean

  concrete bunker which now housed the detainees: the Temporary

  Detention Facility, or TeeDeeEff. Small men – hairless men …

  what would that be like? who tossed the ball blithely back and

  forth. A mean concrete bunker – three rooms, one little more than a

  coal-hole, the others roughly ten metres square, both equipped with

  roughly oblong openings above head-height … in lieu of windows,

  their crumbling edges pierced by the sharp serration of steel reinforcing

  … up late rubbing Bonjela into Miffy’s gums … There was

  a grim sort of vestibule as well – he’d stood in it with Gareth

  Trimmingham when they were doing the handover. We’re an equal

  opportunities employer, said the Coldstreamers’ SeeOh … thought

  he was funny: At least when it comes to entry-level detention –

  we’ve ‘ad ’em all in here – Badr lot, Mucky’s boys, local Ali

  Babas … There’d been a bad atmos’ in the dank blockhouse: the

  wall Trimmer was leaning against had iron hooks hammered into

  it from which hung lengths of rusty chain: We harsh ’em a bit – by

  the book, though, nothing too hairy … Just getting the message

  out. Gawain had looked down at the concrete floor, where there

  was an archipelago of stains which he chose to see as a sort of

  diagram or flow-chart … explaining … the work which goes on

  here. – Nothing iffy, though, Gareth – you’d tell me if there’d

  been anything iffy? Trimmer and his Coldstreamers had muscled in

  on the Sierra Leone deployment – he’d always been a dab hand

  at crawling up brass-arse, had Trimmer. The Thomases had got to

  know the Trimminghams when their respective regiments were in

  Germany – Trimmer’s wife, Marilyn, had palled up with Fi at an

  antenatal class. Big girl, Marilyn – very pale, translucent skin …

  au bleu, he remembers the pair of them doing their exercises on the

  floor of the Thomases’ three-bed apartment … good deal: five

  hundred square metres – four hundred a month, hoiking their heavy

  bellies about as they shouted Girl Power! at the ceiling. Yes, good

  mates they’d been, Marilyn and Fi, but as for their other halves …

  we’d never make a whole. The wives kept in touch, though, and

  one hot summer morning the Thomases drove down to Mitcham

  for a barbecue – hauling the old Volvo estate round the EmmTwentyfive,

  the kids griddling in the back, Gawain’s resentments

  poisonously drip-drip-dripping down on to the steering wheel.

  Yeah-yeah – class act, the Guards. Officers got to be city-slickers,

  commuting into barra
cks from the outer suburbs every day, just

  like any other office-bound muppet. Yeah, class-bloody-act – with

  the emphasis very much on class … Then, when they arrived in

  Mitcham, there’d been instant relief: Trimmer had laid a big bit of

  plastic tarpaulin over the back lawn, and he played a hose over it as

  all the younger guests stripped off and ran and jumped and slid and

  laughed … and screamed. The other families were all army – couple

  of bods from Trimmer’s outfit, and a smiley, plump and faintly

  worrying character called Forbes who, Gawain gathered – without

  needing to be told – was EssEff. Trouble didn’t come from Forbes,

  though, who did a lot of Pimm’s … his number one cup runneth over,

  then slumped in an armchair in front of the afternoon racing. The

  wives huddled up gossiping – and Gawain walked in, unannounced,

  on Trimmer and his bods. They were in Trimmer’s den, which

  boasted shaggy white floor-covering, squashy-black seating – an

  old Space Invaders arcade cabinet in one corner, and Trimmer’s

  certificates and citations all over the walls. While on the windowsill,

  various shelves, the mantelpiece … bloody everywhere had been

  hundreds of whisky miniatures. One of the bods had been passing

  Trimmer an open laptop as Gawain entered … a flying-blue-vee,

  pointing the way to another world, which, for a moment, they were

  unwilling to share with him. But then they had, and to begin

  with Gawain couldn’t understand what it was he was looking at –

  was this some sort of visual trickery? An image flickering into

  another … and back: dress on/dress off, old crone/young beauty,

  shapeless mass/pile of severed arms … Routine patrol stuff, Greeny,

  Trimmer had said – and in that moment the shapeless mass of his

  character had resolved into this bloody atrocity … Trimmer’s

  own words sloshed around in his fruit cup of a mouth. Not a big

  man, Trimmer Trimmingham – in point of fact, exactly the same

  stature as his bountiful wife – but with a large and craggy head.

  A tall-short man, who, when Gawain was looking down on him,

  somehow contrived to … look down on me. No, not a tall man –

  even when he was filmed with a camcorder standing on a pile of

  severed black arms slathered with crimson blood. No. They’d all

  stood there in the darkened den – Trimmer, Gawain, Trimmer’s

  bods – the chilly uplight from the laptop bathing their faces, as

  they took in this … anatomy lesson. Then Trimmer had hit the

  return and the scene shifted a few hundred yards on. Seeing

  Gawain’s expression, Trimmer had reiterated: Routine patrol stuff

  – and one of the bods put in: Who was it that day, Boss, the arfs or

  the rufs? Rather than answer directly, Trimmer deftly manipulated

  the keys so the images staggered towards them – images of children

  only a year or two older than the ones who were frolicking outside

  in the sunny Surrey afternoon. Children wearing cotton shorts

  and T-shirts printed with the colourful logos of YouEss teevee

  shows and cartoon characters, who were sitting on the ground in

  stress positions. Children who’d been deprived of their AyKays –

  which were leaning against the exposed chassis of a technical that’d

  rolled over beside this nameless jungle trail, presumably marking

  the spot at which Trimmer and his merrie men had caught up

  with them. Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, Trimmer said for

  Gawain’s benefit. Those were the fuckers responsible for most of the

  limb-severing – though the rufs, the so-called Revolutionary United

  Front, would get in on the act whenever the oppo’ presented

  itself … As he’d spoken, the camera had tracked back and forth,

  focusing first on one face, then another: a fly strolled along a faintly

  moustached top lip – sweat polished an ebony forehead. – Our

  patrols’d come upon this sorta badness – then we’d catch up with

  the perps easily enough. Why, Greeny? Well, two reasons: first,

  they’d been running round in that jungle for fucking years with

  no one on hand to give ’em a slap. Secundo: well, as you can see –

  arfs, rufs, the other mob as well, all ranks were made up with

  kiddy-winkies. Take away the stick of sugarcane they were sucking

  and hand ’em a fucking gat – after you’ve fucked ’em, course … The

  man filming must have walked backwards at this point, because

  the view widened out to the entire clearing: the Brit grunts standing

  about, in their jungle camos with bush-hat brims pushed up,

  chatting, swigging from their canteens, wiping their mouths and

  then rubbing their palms together – a universal gesture, intended to

  convey to anyone watching … actions speak louder than words. Yes,

  actions speak louder than words, what with small arms for the

  eighties still saving … small arms in the noughties. But that hadn’t

  been the end of it – the camera went on moving: its angle dropping

  so that the forest’s ferny floor filled the viewfinder. There’d been,

  Gawain thinks, an awful complicity in sharing this jerky and downcast

  vision. Outside, all their kids frolicked in perfect safety – inside

  Gawain’s chest his heart hammered. He’d wanted to turn away …

  go away, but he’d been trapped in the tiny scrum of Coldstreamers.

  As they watched, they’d been joined by Forbes, the EssEff cove,

  who’d wandered into this darkened chamber … without knocking.

  Gawain wheezily squeaked, Y-You d-didn’t, did you, Trimmer?

  And Forbes had answered for him: What? Whacked ’em in cold

  blood? I hardly think so, my horsy friend – we were in country for a

  bit of lurping first, and I believe Trimmer’s mob followed on with

  our EmmOh … See, your child soldier can be as bloodthirsty as

  anyone – but they’re buggers to keep in line, and they’ve fuck-all

  in the way of initiative. No: turn left at the cairn of amputated

  arms and keep right on ‘til you run right into the little surgeons.

  Confession’ll be easy enough to extract – if you’ve a bag of Haribo

  to hand … Which had been Trimmer’s cue to say: Fortunately

  we did, Bill … Yes-yes … Gawain buries his head in his hands,

  adopting his own stress position. That’s what Trimmer’d said to Bill

  Forbes the EssEff bod: Fortunately we did – got my Queue-man on

  it before we deployed … A top tip, Gawain had thought at the

  time, which was why he’d had a few when the Rams were forced to

  adopt the stress position: sitting, knees bent and embraced by aching

  arms, praying for glory or deliverance in the Herc’s booming nave,

  while listening to the men’s … boys, really chorus as they strapped

  themselves into the webbing: Gorrany scran, Bessie? And the gawky

  one with the wanker’s wristbones chucked the rustling bag in a wide

  arc … tangtastic! All the awkward positions – the stressed positions

  the Rams’re forced to adopt … the pillowslip coldly moulding his

  face – the lube a chilly dash-then-splodge between his buttocks –

  the bracken swishing and scratching your thighs, the heather

  twist
ing your ankles, the sun cooking through to your … marrow.

  Sixteen-mile yomp – fifty-pound pack: sew a couple of Oxo cubes

  into the hem of your keks – DoubleyouOhs never check there …

  Something to suck on when the going gets … stressful. All the

  awkward positions – the stressed positions he forced me to adopt …

  No more! It must be thirty-five degrees still in the Portakabin, and

  the sweat carries on spurting out of me … a hose played across

  Gawain’s slippery plastic sheeting. You’d tell me if there’d been anything

  iffy, wouldn’t you Trimmer? Gawain had asked Colonel

  Trimmingham in the dirty, dusty, sandy, stained vestibule … were

  we a pair? It’d been a repeat of the stressful position he’d been forced

  into in Trimmer’s Mitcham den: bent over, compelled to look at

  the screen and equally unable to make the right noises – the bods’

  small, appreciative yeahs and deferential coughs. The two young men

  had been arranged on the grassy slope beside the jungle track –

  laid on their sides, facing one another … lovers, post-coitally cooing,

  with flies buzzing around their eyes – moseying in and out of their

  nostrils … again annagain. They wore the same undress uniforms as

  the children they’d mutilated, but in their case the T-shirt designs

  were a bit more unconventional: tight groupings of bullet holes …

  must’ve fired at fairly close range still oozing blood. One for the

  archives, eh, Trimmer? Forbes had said as Trimmer snapped shut

  the laptop. You wouldn’t want some sensitive Guardian-reading

  soul seeing that, now would you? But what’s their solution for evil

  cunts like that, machetes dripping blood? There’d been a subdued

  grunt of manly assent like they’d, all come, Gawain had thought in

  Trimmer’s den – thinks it again now, in the damp crotch of the Iraqi

  night: It was like they’d all come – Trimmer, Forbes, the bods …

  they’d shaken themselves, legs trembling in their chinos and

  EmmanEss cargo shorts. – Emerging from the jungle, they’d heard

  the joyous shrieks of the children playing outside in Mitcham. One

  by one they’d improved their grip on their glasses, bottles and

  cans, before filing out to join them. It’s a dirty and dehumanising

  job, their expressions had said: killing adolescents who’ve mutilated,