by Will Self
against – but I was in all sorts of difficulties already, Jonathan – you
must understand … What the Butcher understands (I do so wish
you wouldn’t harp on that – it’s just a silly nursery rhyme) is that
it’s over. He lets Gawain run on and on … hears him out on the
matter of his terrible deployment – the impossibility of being promoted
out of command … His isolation – his sense from the very
beginning of being embarked on a fool’s errand – doesn’t Jonathan
remember? All those slightly alcoholic afternoons, when they’d sat
in hotel rooms, and Gawain had moaned on about his fool’s errand of a
career … The Butcher hears him out (If you’d only think of yourself
differently, perhaps you’d do different things – power of positive
thinking and all that jazz …), fixated on the beaten and broken
face … of my brother-in-arms. When at last his once beautiful
cavalryman whinnies to a halt, the Butcher (an unpleasant epithet –
so suggestive of bloodthirstiness) says this: Swift writes of the
King of Lilliput that his vision was so acute he could detect the
movement of a clock’s hour hand. Well, we’d need a sovereign of
that stamp in order to register the minute gradations in rank and
preferment which have animated your entire fucking life! Or at least
starts to say this – but ends up SHOUTING IT! Dry white
balls of his spit sticking dagtails to the unshaven and sweaty face of
the … Fighting Ram, as more of the cracked actor’s nauseating
lines, declaimed on the world stage of the Commons, repeat on
him: To suffer the humility of failing courage in the face of pitiless
terror … That is how the Iraqi people live … and how, he thinks,
Amir Ali al-Jabbar died. Never has Jonathan De’Ath felt quite
so cursed by his prodigious memory as now – because it’s with the
thistledown from that summer morning, twelve years since, on
the banks of the Bridgewater Canal tickling my nostrils … that he
bids farewell to … my one true love. A farewell which consists of
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas – in direct contravention of every order
he’s received, most notably the ones setting out the implementation
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in combat zones –
racking his woolly brain for the names of every one of his men
who came into contact with the detainees. When Gawain’s done,
Jonathan – who the entire time has been bracing himself half
upright on the arms of the white plastic garden chair – finally
straightens up … The Provost Marshal will cease any investigation
of these deaths immediately, he says in the dull tones of an efficiently
negligent civil servant. Your men will forget about the incident soon
enough – or, rather, they’ll forget their own lethally irresponsible
behaviour, because it’s very much in their interests to do so. You
will return to Ali al-Garbi today, Gawain – as soon as possible. A
movement order will come in from Brigade by oh-nine-hundred
tomorrow: you will escort Major Townshend back to the YouKay
personally. I suggest you use the time you have together to impress
upon this mentally unstable man the consequences of any more
loose talk. It’s up to you to find the appropriate leverage – don’t let
yourself down, Gawain … He’s standing at the entrance to the
tent, its white plastic flap … in my white plastic hand. He’s looking
at that dear and guileless face, appreciating – even if disgustedly –
the new lines which have appeared on it since we last lay together.
Deep and suffering lines, which will give the Gawain of the
future – the civilian Gawain, who his former lover already sees
sporting a ghostly name badge – that attribute which au fond he’s
always most conspicuously lacked, to whit: character … A fool’s
errand, Gawain – that’s what your poofy Uncle Rodney called
peacetime soldiering, and that’s what you’ve harped on about for
years as well. Well, you may think the significance of the expression
lies in its ostensible meaning, but I don’t think so: it’s a cliché,
Gawain, a fucking cliché. I used to find it endearing – your propensity
for these hoary old idioms – your getting-back-to-the-drawing-board
at-the-drop-of-a-hat and your eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head,
which – or so you assured me – allowed you to see if your troopers
weren’t cutting-the-mustard. But let me tell you, I see your
idiolect for what it is now: the language of a man who thinks in
clichés – who, to all intents and purposes, is a fucking cliché …
Outside, it takes Jonathan a few moments to gain his night-sight –
then he looks up to a sky that’s a dark violet field scattered with
periwinkle stars in which a single grey cloud floats. It might, he
thinks, be the smoke from ordinance that he didn’t hear explode, or
some altogether more pathetic fallacy … He finds the red cap easily
enough, skulking by the rack of sidearms, and the man escorts him
to the Provost Marshal’s office, which is a Portakabin on top of
two other Portakabins accessed by a metal stairway. You’re up rather
late … are Jonathan’s first words, as, hand outstretched, he advances
towards the man’s metal desk. They’re spoken with all the charm of
which he’s capable, while he simultaneously thinks, How shit a plod
have you got to be to end up here? The Provost Marshal, a full and
corpulent Colonel, looks up from the laptop he’s been fiddling with:
Ah, yes, he says, you must be the EssEyeEss bod Gerry said was
coming in – have you caught up with this twerp from Ali al-Garbi,
yet? They shake hands and Jonathan sees what the Provost Marshal
has been doing, sitting in the Iraqi night, wearing a helmet and
full body armour ’cause Portakabin versus mortar isn’t good odds …
He’s been playing Minesweeper, that’s what the Provost Marshal
has been doing – using his forensic skills and carefully honed powers
of deduction … to avoid tiny squares appearing to go up in smoke.
They sit and chat for a while, Jonathan and the Provost Marshal –
whose name is Ted. Jonathan feels they hit it off rather well. Ted
gets one of his staff to make Jonathan a cup of tea. When Jonathan’s
ready to leave, they shake hands rather more warmly than they did
initially. The Provost Marshal says, Do you need a burn box for
those? And Jonathan, who’s borrowed a white plastic bag to put
the paperwork in, replies, No, I think I can manage, thanks, Ted.
They stand chatting on the external stairs for a few minutes – Ted
up above, Jonathan down below. It’s still dark, and the Divisional
Detention Facility – its blockhouses, wire-fenced compounds and
walkways – is lit up by sodium lights. From this angle the effect is
as of a circuitry diagram, and Jonathan thinks this just, because if
the entire rationale for the Shaibah Logistics Base is to exercise
power over the inhabitants of south-eastern Iraq, then this place –
where men are hooded, shouted at, subjected to white noise, forced
to maintain stress
positions and deprived of sleep – is where you put
the batteries in … the only problem being that they’re not included.
That man Thomas, Jonathan says lightly: the Yorkshire Hussars’
SeeOh – I’ve told him he can return to Ali al-Garbi in the morning?
And Ted, equally lightly, replies: Not a prob’ – Adjutant
General’s lot are all over the shop anyway, and when they do get
their act together there’re umpteen similar snafus to deal with …
Ted hitches up his webbing belt and accepts the Marlboro Jonathan
offers him with a Ta, don’t mind if I do, before continuing: Thing
is … our political masters are on a hiding to nothing: they’ve
instructed us to incorporate Human Rights legislation into the
rules of war, but, let’s face it, war’s about depriving humans of any
rights they may have. Bit loopy, if you ask me – loopy for the grunts
bracing the Ali Babas and trying to contain the militias, loopy for
my lot when they end up having to brace the grunts over their,
ah … bracing. Ted stoops to take a light from Jonathan’s vintage
Dupont: Mark my words, seven thousand different sorts of bullshit
are going to be generated by this … um, conflict – your man’s
particular bullshit will be easy enough to lose track of. Even when
we do try to investigate something thoroughly – and are given
the resources to do it – the enquiry’s one embuggeration after
another: suspects redeployed – posted here there and everywhere –
while civilian witnesses are getting the frighteners put on them, and
military ones? Well, we both know the story, the last thing anyone
associated with the regiment will want is to cast a shadow on their
deployment – as for the Iraqis, after the shit they’ve been through
they’re pretty bloody realistic: they’ll take the compo and keep it …
zipped. Five grand YouEss’ll buy you a lot of white plastic garden
chairs … Standing in front of the open fridge door, listening to
its low buzz, Jonathan thinks of his house. (You think of your
house, not your home – which saddens me, Johnny.) He sniffs the
musty and over-conditioned air of the pod, then glances round to
check the holdall he bought in Kuwait City is still there. A small
shock – a slight prickling of the nape hairs. He popped his
last thirty-six-milligram tablet of methyphenidate hours ago, just
before cross-decking into the aypeesee, but most of the dosage is
time-release … and should still be powering me. But … But … he
can’t remember having said goodbye to the Provost Marshal –
has no memory of leaving the DeeDeeEff, can’t recall if he was
escorted to the pod –. (Or if you made your own way here – d’you
know, I think you might be lagging …) How d’you know about
lagging? Jonathan addresses his father’s death mask, which hangs
from a metal hook screwed into the pod’s metal wall: You never had
anything to do with computers in your life – let alone computer
games. (Don’t you remember that driving range we used to go to?)
The one in Staines? (No, Sunbury – anyway, there was always a
lag – albeit a small one – between the physical ball striking the net,
and the filmic one appearing on the screen. What’s that, Johnny, if
not … lagging?) Jonathan stoops to open the fridge, the Samsung
phone Barry gave him knocking softly against his prominent hip
bone. Stooping to open the fridge, the phone Barry gave him – a
Samsung – softly knocks against his hip bone, which is prominent.
Jonathan’s prominent hip bone knocks against the phone Barry
gave him, Sam … sung as he stoops to open the fridge. The Mars
Bar he remembers being in it is gone. (Of course it is, you ate it in
that vile tent – chewed it up while standing right beside a corpse.
Really, Johnny! I mean … really!) He remembers there being a
Mars Bar in there – but it’s gone. It’s gone: the Mars Bar he remembers
being in there, and in its place, on a small plate, there’re
polythene-wrapped cheese sandwiches which they eat at the
summit, their backs against the cold concrete of a freshly poured
trigonometric marker. As they swig the whisky-laced coffee, Zack
explains what it’s for, and the basic principles of the Ordnance
Survey – information he would’ve assumed was at the tips of her
capable fingers – after all, what the hell is there to do in Fife, besides
go for bracing country walks? But no: there are these charming
lacunae in Isobel’s understanding of the world – ones which he, her
soon-to-be lover, the thief of her maidenhead, can impart with a
mature capability he hopes she finds … reassuring. And if he were
to take that maidenhead here, on top of Tinto Hill on a blowy-bright
October afternoon? Take it in a charmingly casual way – no
fuss nae bother … The two of them at first sitting on Missus Kane’s
paired and folded rugs, their backs against the trig’ point, passing
the cup of whisky-laced coffee back and forth, wolfing down the
cheese sandwiches, before falling on each other’s mouths and necks.
If he were to – and she weren’t to demur. She weren’t to demur … he
thinks, the whole thing rests on her demurral, if only she weren’t so
demure. It is, he thinks, a form of the linguistic turn, something he’s
read about, and understands intermittently, as the Javelin’s antiquated
indicator stalk lifts intermittently from its housing to signal
left: Zack could, he thinks, throw his life away on any woman to
whom the word demure could be applied unreservedly. He sees them
shuffle along this timeline – it’s an Astonishing Tale right enough,
Doc: doctors Zachary and Isobel Busner, escalating into the future
up a spiralling ribbon of genetic coding, their two handsome six-footer
Scots sons at their side, while enlarged molecular models float
overhead, symbolising sagacity and the virtues of an enquiring
mind. All this, and the very heaven of lying promiscuously entangled
with a completely naked and bewitching Isobel – the two of them
bundled snugly in the rugs, their clothes having been slipped off
without let, hindrance or embarrassment and stuffed themselves
into his vest. Or would it quite possibly have gone dreadfully
wrong? Ooh, yes – I’m liking this more, Doc … A mistimed attempt at
a kiss – because, let’s face it, you don’t grab at a young lady when
she’s trying to talk seriously about Aldermaston. Teeth clash harder,
more jarringly than civilisations. She wouldn’t like that – and in a
trice he’d abandon all hope. The day would grow instantly higher
and colder – the hills would feel alive with storm troopers. He’d
suggest they walk back down to the car – they might catch the
matinee at the cinema in Biggar? A two-prong strategy: it’s conceivable
she’ll unbend a little in cramped, warm darkness – or he
can cut his losses, enjoy the flick: It’ll probably be some old weepy,
it’s a tiny circuit – they don’t get the new releases for months … is the
sort of thing he might well say. Then, having divvied up, an
d been
escorted past hunched-up crones, chittering weans, cap-crammed
old fellows in from the kale yard – all of them supporting their
invalid teeth with sugary crutches – the plan would very likely go
wrong in this way: his stupid dumb cock – his unabashed penis. All
the rest of him is flabby – he knows that – and would remain so …
in any conceivable future, but his prick, his dick, his John Thomas?
Donald Campbell, skipping across the glassy surface of Lake
Windermere in Bluebird, spots an object unidentifiable for crucial
seconds, closing in on his port bow – collision is unavoidable,
and the last thing he sees before his attempt to beat his own water-speed
record ends in tragedy is that his nemesis is a rigid, streamlined
and emphatically Jewish penis, the obscenely domed tip of which
plunges through the jet-powered speedboat’s hull with all the
intellectual power of Moses Maimonides … But that lies in the nearfuture
possibly … If the film showing at the Biggar Rialto pleased
Isobel, she’d soften – say it was something like The Inn of the Sixth
Happiness, a nineteen fifty-eight vehicle for Ingrid Bergman, in
which, faintly preposterously, she plays Gladys Aylward, a humble
Englishwoman gripped with missionary zeal. Isobel McKechnie,
upright daughter of the manse, would like that – she’d sit watching
Bergman make her way through a London fabricated out of well-known
landmarks, and edited together with two-second bus rides
and four-second walks. She’d smile faintly as Bergman – a mere
cleaner in the Chelsea home of Sir Francis, the patron of the
Missionary Society – agitated meekly to go to China. And Zack?
He’d sit there in the darkness, listening to Scots teeth being ground
down all around him, and dealing with the ache of his engorged
genitals by focusing so intently on every last line of dialogue, were
he to find himself, over half a century later, on a train heading
north – a train which passes within a few miles of the cinema where
he’d likely sat on that October Saturday afternoon – he’d recall
them better … than my own name, which is? Sundowning, they
call it – this much he knows: an ugly verbal coinage, he thinks – but
then that’s the modern idiom all over, with its reckless propensity
