by Owen Sheers
Pink Mist
OWEN SHEERS
For Lyndon,
whose story was almost Arthur’s,
and for his mother, Sharon,
who brought him home
‘Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth gan wawr,
Dygymyrrws eu hoed eu hanianawr’
‘Men went to Catterick with the dawn,
Their ardours shortened their lives’
Y Gododdin, c. 7th century
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1: After Before
2: Hads’ Story
3: Taff’s Story
4: Arthur’s Story
5: Home to Roost
Glossary
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
1 AFTER BEFORE
The sound of wind on a high hill
Three boys went to Catterick.
It was January,
snow pitchen on the Severn,
turning the brown mud white,
fishermen blowing on their fingerless gloves,
the current pulling their fishing lines tight.
That’s how it was the morning when
the three of us did what boys always have
And left our homes for war.
Cos that’s what we did, for sure,
make no mistake.
Not going someplace but leaving somewhere.
Getting out, moving on, away from here.
The three of us – Hads, Taff and me,
boarding the train that day,
a suitcase each and a couple of cans,
nervous drags when we changed at Darlington,
those fags going down
quicker than a cider in summer.
Three boys, going to Catterick for basic.
New recruits, crows they called us,
the beastings and learnings and drills all ahead of us.
But already there.
Three boys. Yeah, we might have thought ourselves men,
but we weren’t, not yet, not then.
Just three friends who’d once linked arms at school
when I was nine, Hads was seven and Taff just eight.
Touring the yard, a chain of three, chanting like fools,
Who wants to play war?
Who wants to play war?
Jump cut to ten years later and the answer was us,
we did.
The game became our way you see –
out, on, off. So yeah, we did.
Three boys, like I said, not men, leaving for Catterick.
Friend us on Facebook and you’ll soon see
how quick our profile shots scroll back
from battledress to uniform,
from webbing to sports bag,
from ration pack to lunch box,
from out there to back here.
But we’re not scrolling back, not yet anyway.
So three boys then, waiting for the bus at Darlington.
Smoke and winter breaths in the air,
eyeing the other lads, as pale and edgy as us.
None of them looked up to much, but then neither did we.
None of us looked like squaddies or riflemen.
But it was all there, inside us, waiting to happen.
We didn’t know it but we were already history.
And history’s what we’ve become.
Not the kind that’s recorded or sung, perhaps,
but history still. Our own, histories of one.
And look how far we’ve come. Full circle.
Back where we left from – Bristol.
Bonfire night, and all of us hiding like dogs
from the whizz-bangs, the bright and sparkly fun.
From up here I can see it all.
The rockets going up from Clevedon,
dropping their lights like lumies,
then soft popping ones, rising then falling
down in the city on George the Fifth Fields.
A crowd of orange faces round the fire and the guy,
burning.
Burning.
Can’t go there. Or there. So better stay here.
Up on Dundry Hill, under the transmitter.
Under the clear night sky,
the last of the planes coming in to land.
Stars coming out. House windows turning on.
Street lights.
Always a light in the dark.
Even for Hads down there in the Shire,
sitting on his mum’s sofa, trousers rolled, curtains drawn,
cast in the aquarium light of the screen
as he plays Operation Afghan
to drown out the sound
of the kids on the street mucking around
with bangers and whistles, or anything else
that might make him jump, start or shit hisself.
Look at him, scoring the points, dropping them down,
reloading his mag.
Taking the role, tonight, of a Navy SEAL,
doing on that sofa what we all did, once, for real.
Where’s Taff?
Not in the West, that’s for sure.
Not in the Shire or out Severn Beach where I used to live.
Not with Lisa either, or with Tom his five-year-old kid.
No, they’ll be out Clevedon, or down on the fields,
taking part in the family fun.
But not Taff.
He’s deep in the centre, taking cover,
mashing hisself on dubstep in the Tunnels,
dancing alone in the crowd,
feeling the bass vibrate in his ribs,
dropping down pills to mix with his meds.
He’s painen, I can tell.
But there’s no way he’ll surface tonight.
Not with those rockets and fireworks
and all them kids oohing and ahhing,
and him, wanting to duck at every one,
go firm, get on the buckle.
No, Taff’ll see the night through down there
deep in the Tunnels, filling his ears
with Forsaken, Headhunter and Pinch.
He knows he can’t risk them, the rockets or the drink.
That if he lets ’em, they’ll both take a mile off him,
never an inch.
So how’d we get here then?
How’d we close this circle so fast?
If you’ll listen I’ll tell you.
Cos it was me what got us boarding that train,
what got us leaving not going.
Yeah, it was me who said three boys should go to Catterick,
with snow pitchen on the Severn,
fishermen blowing on their gloves.
My idea, my plan, to link our arms again,
to go on a tour.
To answer the chant of our school days with us,
us, we want to play war.
So let’s talk about before,
about why I chose the rank and file.
It was January, like I said, 2008,
and I’d been thinking about it for a while.
Every time I came down Colston Avenue
I’d stop at the Army Information Centre,
pause at its window, read the ads,
the jobs, what they said you could do –
JTAC, Infantry, Driver,
Cook, Intelligence, Engineer.
Raise your sights the brochure said.
And one night, I did.
We’d been out on the piss and were going for a kebab
when some scutler of Hads’ stopped in her tracks,
bent double and flashing her tramp-stamp,
chucked up her guts.
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While we waited for her and her mates,
I read that line again –
Raise your sights.
When I did, I saw my own face,
my ghosted head, right where the picture of a soldier’s was,
so now his beret, his uniform, his whole rig was on me,
and I was him.
There were other ghosts too, reflected in that glass,
but they were from my present, not my future or my past.
A Friday-night crowd mashed on cider and pills,
blowing their packets on a night of forgetting,
of pulling and shots.
An ambulance, paramedics.
A drifting litter of boxes and cans,
girls more flesh than dress.
And I didn’t want any of it.
The same big night in the same small town,
the Friday carrot at the end of the stick.
I wanted something else – him.
The man looking back at me,
the one with the uniform, the gun.
The one going somewhere, getting something done.
The next day I walked.
I was shacked up with Gwen in St Paul’s back then
so I told her I’d be back for lunch, then left,
early morning.
GWEN
But you didn’t come back did you?
That was the day I lost you. I see that now.
I should have held on to you,
pulled you back into bed.
If only I could’ve seen inside your head.
ARTHUR
But you can’t, can you, babe? That’s a private place,
and right then, I didn’t need you, I needed space.
But I did come back. I did.
GWEN
No you didn’t. Not Arthur anyhow.
Some other bloke, perhaps. But not my man.
You was always leaving, always,
from that day on.
Where did you go anyway?
ARTHUR
Out to the bridge, at first.
GWEN
What, to –?
ARTHUR
– No! I had you. And Mum.
I was going the other way. I was looking for a life,
not to take one.
And anyway, I’d never do it there.
GWEN
Why? Too common for you?
ARTHUR
No. Just …
I saw a man once, who –
GWEN
– You never told me.
ARTHUR
I never told no one. Not even Mum.
I was only twelve, thirteen.
It were early on, mist in the gorge.
I was cycling over to Ashton, the golf course,
to look for lost balls in the rough, when –
He was standing at the edge, smoking a fag,
just past the Samaritans sign.
Looking straight out he was, at the dawn,
but I reckon he heard me,
cos he turned then, see. Turned and looked right at me.
GWEN
How old was he?
ARTHUR
Older, to me I mean. But young now I guess.
Our age about. Twenty-two, twenty-three.
He was calm.
Just looked at me, took one long drag,
stubbed it out, then –
GWEN
He jumped?
ARTHUR
No.
Well, yeah, he did. But more like flew.
Ran a few steps then launched hisself over.
Chest out, arms wide.
A perfect ten-out-of-ten high-board dive.
I didn’t stop. Didn’t want to see.
But when I got the other side – well, I cried.
His eyes. They stayed with me for years.
GWEN
Why you tellin’ me this now, Arthur?
Why only now?
ARTHUR
Cos I thought of him again that day,
when I walked on to the bridge.
How he’d flown like that.
I didn’t want to follow him,
but I did want something in his dive.
In how he’d done it.
That’s all I can say.
GWEN
And that’s when you made up your mind?
Because of some bloody jumper?
ARTHUR
No, that was later, up at the church.
But it wasn’t me who made the call.
It was the water,
I let the water tell me what to do.
GWEN
Water? What you talking about, Arthur?
All I know is when you came back,
your mind was set.
You were joining – The Rifles,
you told me straight out.
ARTHUR
The water in the pendulum.
You’ve seen it. You went there with Lisa and Tom.
Taff told me. She wrote him a bluey about it.
GWEN
That thing in St Mary’s? On the wall?
ARTHUR
Yeah, that’s the one. It, not me, made the call.
Still don’t know how I found myself there, but I did.
Staring at it, the church empty.
A long hollow pipe across the beam of a cross
with water pumped in to make it swing left or right
depending on which way the water is lost.
As good a way as any, that’s what I thought.
So I waited till it swung, then came back into line,
then said to myself ‘Left’s the army, to the right’s not.’
I swear, the water took longer that time.
I watched the tips of the steel beam waver,
dip, lift, like it was taking a breath,
before the water filled to a tipping point,
and the pendulum fell.
To the left.
And that was it. Didn’t wait.
Just walked straight back out.
You know the rest.
GWEN
Yeah, I do.
But I still don’t know why, just the what.
ARTHUR
Think of where we were, Gwen. What we’d got.
GWEN
Each other!
ARTHUR
Yeah. But that gave me more reason, didn’t it?
Don’t you see?
I did it for us, not for me.
Think about it, Gwen.
I’d been working down Portbury docks for, what?
Over a year by then?
Driving those Mazdas off the container ships,
parking them in perfect lines, like headstones in a cemetery.
Slotting each one, then back for the next.
Every day. Every week. Every month.
One of the largest car parks in Europe,
and just me and two brothers
filling it at one end as it emptied at the other.
I’ve worked it out, Gwen – how far I drove.
Thousands of miles. But where did I go?
Nowhere.
Never stopped moving from clock on to clock off,
but stayed still all that time, stuck in dry dock.
That’s no future, Gwen, and not much of a present either.
And we wanted more, didn’t we? Kids, a house, the rest.
The Rifles offered us that.
GWEN
Yeah, heard it all before, Arthur,
‘Be the Best.’
ARTHUR
And we were. You never saw us, we were. The company, the Batt—
GWEN
– Enough! I don’t want to hear no more.
ARTHUR
It felt different, walking out that door.
I felt different.
Like I’d taken that dive.
You know the first thing I saw?
That rusted piece of tramline, stuck in the grass.
The
one that was blown there in the Second World War.
I went up and touched it.
I don’t know what for, but I did.
And I felt connected,
like I was part of something already.
As I walked back to Gwen’s,
everything had changed in the city.
I’d done nothing, but everything.
It’s funny like that, isn’t it?
How the only thing that changes is your mind,
but then everything else follows.
How all of it was set in that church.
Not just for me, but for Taff and Hads too.
And for Lisa, and Gwen, and Tom and my mum.
One choice.
Hard to believe it can do so much.
But it can.
I told the lads down the Thekla, next night.
I’d already done it, joined up that afternoon.
Taken the oath, signed on the line.
And it felt good too.
The recruiter, he’d treated me like a man.
Like what I could be, not what I am.
So yeah, I wanted them – Hads, Taff – to feel like that too.
The Thekla was packed. A retro night of old Bristol tunes,
the kinda stuff my mum would play –
Tricky, Portishead, Massive.
An old showboat, moored up in the Mud Dock,
dark waters lapping at its hull,
smells of a ferry and a bar all in one.
A floating steel club, ringing that night
with trip-hop, not dub.
We was on our fourth or fifth cider when I told them,
shouting over the chatter and bass.
They leant in, close to my face.
‘I joined up,’ I said. ‘Today. 1st Battalion, The Rifles.’
Taff got it straight off,
nodding, serious over his pint.
