– The fuck’s going on here?
– Turn it up.
Rhys does. Quick thoughts of invasion but then the voice-over explains that the tanks are at Heathrow airport to deter terrorists. Prime Minister has said that he’s deployed the army to deter terrorists and to make people feel safer. Shots of people with baggage walking past tanks and looking terrified.
– What? What are they gunner do if a plane’s hijacked, shoot it down? What use are tanks against suicide hijackers?
Robert nods. – Aye. Should all be in Iraq, anyway. That’s where the fucking war is.
A microphone is held to a soldier’s face. He speaks in the accent of southern England about ‘sending a message to the terrorists’. Another soldier in a beret speaks in the accent of the Welsh valleys about how he’d rather be ‘doing his bit in Iraq’ but he goes where he’s told to go and if that means making Heathrow airport a safer place then so be it. Then another soldier speaks in a lowland Scottish accent about how terrorists will ‘think twice when they see all this hardware’ and then the country’s leader himself is speaking from a podium about ‘sending a message to the terrorists’ that ‘the peoples of this ancient democracy’ will not be ‘frightened into inaction’ and will ‘defend themselves by any means possible’. We will not surrender to terrorism, he says, several times. The terrorists must not win.
– Still don’t see the point of putting tanks in airports, Rhys says. – Should be in Iraq. Should be going up against the Republican fucking Guard, not sitting outside Costa fucking Coffee at bloody Heathrow.
Robert nods. Ronnie grumbles and shifts position a little and Rhys and Robert watch him then look back at the TV screen when it’s clear he’s not about to wake up.
– You sure he’s alright?
Robert nods. – That pill was a horse trank or something, that’s all. It’s just knocked him out. He might’ve woken up in the middle of the night but we were asleep then, weren’t we? He’s alright. He’ll be awake soon. With a bad head.
There’s a crowd on the TV now. A crowd of people bearing banners and placards that read ‘NOT IN MY NAME’ and ‘NO WAR FOR OIL’ and pictures of the Prime Minister’s grinning face splattered with red paint. The crowd is chanting something. It is a huge crowd in central London, filling the city’s streets, crammed into the canyons between the old stone buildings, the big grey buildings, filling the windy tunnels between them with a mass of moving, noisy flesh. The face of a famous actress fills the screen, a Trafalgar Square lion behind her. What a wonderful race we are, she says, and then she’s followed by the face of a famous footballer as the programme switches to an article about the coming European Championships and the various ‘celebrity endorsements’ of the England team that will be competing in them, and there are the faces of footballers and pop stars and the wives and girlfriends of those footballers and pop stars and these people are strobed by the flashing of a thousand cameras and rocked by the screams of a thousand worship-pers and the skin on the faces of these people is stroboscopically bleached and bled by a need not their own. Their features in rapid flickering like machine-gun fire, flash flash flash, the pointillistic projection of their smirks and satisfaction against the colourless backdrop of a colossal emptiness.
Rhys and Robert watch the TV, watch these faces, and say nothing. Ronnie dreams on on his lucky moo-cow rug. Then Rhys and Robert cheer as they are fed images of a desert landscape dotted with tanks and flown over by jets and helicopters and the screen is filled with the dusty face of a British officer mouthing words like ‘victory’ and ‘prevail’ but then complaining about the sub-standard equipment his men have to face ‘the enemy’ with and Rhys and Robert and maybe Ronnie too all feel a lurch inside their guts as the planet spins in space, tips their country once again on the arc towards nightfall, guides their eyes across countries then continents, out of the cat-shitted house that smells of fag smoke and stale beer and cheesy Dorito farts, out of the village which goes on silently existing, out of the country that howls in either protest or adulation under a vast umbrella of longing and frustration, out of the airports guarded by idling machines of war, the airports where signs everywhere say DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T andwhere tannoys fill the air with prohibitions saying DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T, across a continent and into a cowering land of sand that has been shocked and awed by decades of deprivation and is now blistering and shrivelling under flame from all directions, where a boy watches the high circling of a jet in the bright blue cloudless sky and sees two spurts of smoke from that plane’s underside and hears a shrieking as he runs, a shrieking that has become deafening in two of his child’s strides that in two strides is splitting his ears and shredding the world, this boy who in two minutes will be in the arms of his mother who weeps and wails as she holds and rocks his body, the brains of him pooling in her heaving lap, the blade of shrapnel that scooped the top of his skull away still smoking on the sand next to the mother’s jerking knee.
– Can’t wait to get over there, man, Robert says. – Wake that fucker up and let’s get out of here. Waste some fucking ragheads.
He nods towards Ronnie as the world for a moment stops spinning. Ronnie continues to sleep and dream on his lucky moo-cow rug.
The Ned and the grinner finish their game and Ronnie is unsure who has won because the crowing of the victor is drowned out by yet another commotion, the grunt and bellow of another war-engine approaching. Ronnie notices that the crowd has stopped, at least for the moment, destroying itself and has stilled and he can now make out individuals within the mass, specific people standing there panting and crazed of eye, some missing limbs or noses or ears and all of them agleam with sweat and blood, some of the blood hardened to a black crust and some of it still fresh and redly pumping. The crowd’s collective panting mirrors the sound of the approaching war machine, the beating groan and pump of hot exhaust, and the crowd parts to let it emerge, another tank of course, this one all painted a dark blue with a big white X across it and ridden on by a burly young man with reddish stubble across his pale face, dressed in the same sandy-hued camouflage fatigues as the first two riders and wearing on his head a beret with a small patch of tartan stitched to the front of it. And like the first two he too carries a rifle with a sand-clogged barrel and his boots too have warped and shrunk tightly to his feet and the hands that protrude from the sleeves of the uniform and that tightly grip the gun are split and cracked and streaked with scabs. The eyes of this rider are pale blue marbles set deep in inflamed circles of pink skin, pink swollen skin, and Ronnie thinks that they look sore, those eyes, very sore, scorched and sunken as they are, and he feel his own eyes begin to water in sympathy. Those eyes have been burnt by the sun and had their moisture stolen by drifting dust and heat and are plaqued by what they have seen, scored through by what they have witnessed. The tank approaches Jack and halts with a terse gnash of gears mere inches from that banner and its two sit-ters, the Ned and the grinner, still clutching their handsets but both now looking up at this new rider.
– Mah troop, he says. – Mah entire fuckin comp’nih. Wiped oot. Alla them. Deid. Fuckin roadside bomb, bang, body parts ivriwhir. Snipers picked the survivoors oaf. Me, Ah wis luckih; knocked oot, flung oot the jeep, thih thoat Ah wis already deid. An see mah troop? Some ay thim the finest fuckin soojirs these islands ivir hud. Tellin ye, man. Best fuckin soojirs yiv ivir seen, bar nun. What will ye do noo, man? Yir fuckin armih’s dyin. An yeer sendin mair young men intae yon fuckin meat-grinder? Ye havnae fuckin clue, man, tellin ye. Call it oaf. Call the whole fuckin thing oaf. See in ten years’ time? We’ll be comin haim and nuthin’ll be any fuckin different. Sept the bloodied patches ay sand whair the boays of these islands got blewn a-fuckin-pert.
The grinner gives every appearance of having listened to this speech, looking thoughtful at the rider for a minute or two, but then he points a finger at the Ned and says: – That last game was mine. So I’ve won, and the Ned wordlessly and seemingly withou
t any emotion stands and stamps his handset under his shoes and then does the same to the console. He kicks it over and then stamps on its face again and again, sparks fly and smoke spits and hisses and glass explodes. He does this, the Ned, as if it is the only viable reaction to loss; as if there isn’t any choice whatsoever open to him other than this, that the line of causation goes directly from loss to destruction and will never, could never, branch or deviate.
The grinner observes this destruction with no change to his expression; the grin stays and the eyes remain glazed. When the Ned has finished and has taken a seat amongst the smithereens the grinner looks up again at the tank’s rider and says:
– By my actions have I answered questions. The time has come for…
– Aye, I know, I know, the rider interrupts. – The time has come for an end to talking, right? Hird it aw befaw, man. Meant fuck aw then an it means fuck aw noo. Thanks fir fuckin nuttin.
The tank’s engines re-roar and the machine reverses in an arc then moves forward, curving as it does, cutting through the crowd, disappearing down the valley. Its engine’s noise drops from a roar to a shout to a grumble then a drone and then it falls quiet. The entire valley falls quiet in fact; no more fighting, no more war machines, no more electronic rage from the games console which now lies in pieces on the banner called Jack which the grinner now orders to be cleared away. Two obsequiously eager and fore-lock-tugging figures come cringingly from one of the smaller crowds that line the banks of the ford and sweep the detritus off Jack and then roll the banner up reverentially and bear it silently and solemnly away. The Ned stands and stares, the metal rope around his neck glinting. The grinner stands and stares too, the palings of pale enamel between his lips shining.
Ronnie hears birds twitter. He enjoys their singing for a moment then turns to the Beast of Britain and asks him who the three men were who rode the tanks and who had come to tell the grinning man about the distant dying and destruction.
– Unhappy men, the Beast says. – Men who are unhappy at the loss of their countries. Sons of those who were blown to atoms at Mametz Wood, Passchendaele, the Somme, Dunkirk, all over Europe, the world. Sons of the men who died too young and in terrible pain so that the people of their countries would never be sent to a faraway war on a lie to ingratiate themselves to the warrior over the water, to the sleeping giant who has now woken up and is in a very greedy mood. Sons of the men who died too young and in terrible pain so that their offspring could live in a country which is free from signs everywhere telling them DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T.
The Beast picks his nose as he thinks for a bit. Extracts a bogey, examines it, then flicks it away. Then says: – At least, that’s what they think they are. Me, I reckon they’re just a bunch of whinging bastards.
– Not the bravest men? asks Ronnie.
– I wouldn’t call them that, no. But they belong to an island race that once hated to suffer any loss but which now hates the thought that somebody else might possibly have more than them.
– An island race?
– Well, a group of races, I suppose. Something like that. But all bound up into one by living on the same scab of land. Look where they come.
And the Beast sweeps a big and meaty arm to indicate the valley down which a multitude proceeds, a mass millions-strong, steadily walking, almost marching, towards the place where Ronnie stands and stares. They fill the valley floor, between the huge green rock-topped walls, beneath the flat blue sky, and the ground trembles with the steady tramping of their many feet.
– Don’t be fooled by them, the Beast says. – They appear united, and calm in their unity, but they are attached to each other mainly by wires of mutual loathing. Few of them visibly declare their allegiances or their hatreds but I know who they are and I know of the abhorrences that burn within their breasts. Those with money hate those without, and vice versa. The Red Rose hates the White Rose. Both Roses hate the Dragons and the Thistles. The Blue-birds hate the Swans. The Magpies hate the Black Cats. The Liver Birds hate the Red Devils and the Toffees hate the Liver Birds. The Canaries hate the Tractor Boys. The Gunners hate the Spurs. I could go on. In some instances ‘hate’ might be too strong a word but ‘distrust’ or ‘dislike’ would do. None of these people really like each other; each one believes that his or her neighbour is stealing their air, or is crowding in on the patch of land they have to live on. Each one believes that their neighbour has unjustly robbed something from them. Each one believes that their failures are the fault of someone else. Each one believes that their lives would be improved if their neighbours were to be removed. And these are your people, soldier boy, fighter-for-freedom, scourge of the tyrant; it is for this crowd that you will kill and lie broken and legless and screaming with your guts prominent on your chest in a desert land thousands of miles away. These are the children of this ancient democracy. These are the children of a brave warrior race. Of people who strapped rebels across the barrels of cannons at Lucknow and who fought like lions to free Europe. Of despots and rebels. Of sadists and altruists. Of imperialists and liberators. An odd, mixed people, now chipped away at down to this, this crowd. Only the objects of their hatred differentiates them. Look where they come.
And it passes, this crowd, passes Ronnie in its individual components, and Ronnie’s dream-self is quickly aware of the inaptitude of the word individual. Under the flat blue sky the men of the crowd wear, mostly, shorts and training shoes, some shorts too tight and white and others hemming at mid-calf. The bared torsos are, many of them, the shapes of apples with limbs, some pillowing down over the shorts so that, from the front, some of the men appear, dismayingly, naked. Other torsos bulge with muscle, ripped by ’roids and weights. And there are tattoos, everywhere there are tattoos, although Ronnie soon realises that there are only a few designs shared amongst the crowd; many thousands of arms bear tiger stripes with pointed ends; many shoulders bear figures that look vaguely Celtic or Maori in origin; many people have big crucifixes on their backs because they once saw David Beckham bearing that mark and thought it looked cool and original and individual; many upper arms bear smaller crucifixes too because their owners saw Wayne Rooney wearing one and thought it looked cool and original and individual; the insides of many forearms bear Sanskrit lettering because their owners saw Craig Bellamy or any one of a hundred other footballers bearing that mark and thought it looked cool and original and individual; many women, on the fleshy outsides of their palms, bear a little black squiggle because they once saw Cheryl Cole bearing that mark and thought it looked cool and original and individual; many women sport antler-like designs in the small of their backs because, well, that’s what everyone else has got. This must be the most tattooed nation on the planet, thinks Ronnie, with so few different designs; in any thousand people, 800 of them will be tattooed with any one of only five or so patterns. And hair: either worn shorn to the bone or teased down into comb’s teeth on the forehead. The hive mind hums. The hive mind drones. My people, the dream-Ronnie thinks. It is for these that I must kill and die far, far away. Drone goes the hive mind.
– These are your people, soldier boy, says the Beast. – Defenders of freedom. Keepers of the values of democracy and fair play. Do you see yourself fighting for these people? Killing for them? Dying for them? Tell me. What do you see?
And the dream-Ronnie closes his eyes and it seems that he dreams still further, a dream-within-a-dream, a vision in a vision in which he sees himself in an armoured car travelling across a vast and flat expanse of one-colour sand beneath a blast-furnace sun; he feels the movement of the vehicle, feels the rocking of his body, feels the impact and detonation of the RPG as a sudden and dangerous idea in his bowels; sees himself, or what’s left of himself, supine on the seared sand, hears the hiss and sizzle of his escaping blood; sees his legs, several feet away; sees the unbothered blue of the high sky blacken.
Singing yanks him from his trance. The crowd is singing songs of tribal intent, bellowed expressions
of hatreds. ‘Three Lions on my Shirt’ – Ronnie makes out these words. Chanting. The air above the crowd crackles. Violence again is imminent. Ronnie notices that many mobile phones are being brandished, their owners eager to film some violence. The Ned has joined the crowd and has become lost in it but the grinner is watching them and still grinning. Ronnie doesn’t think he can stand to look at that grin any more. It hurts his eyes. Its very fixity is making him feel sick.
– Do you want to follow this man? the Beast shouts, pointing to the grinner, and many in the milling crowd turn to face him. – Follow this man to war?
A roar from the stirring crowd.
– Then follow him! All the way to London! Three thousand miles away from the bullets and the blood!
The crowd roars as one and falls in behind the grinner, who grinningly proceeds to lead them down the valley in a determined jog. All of them alike. All of them doing the same thing. The hive mind drones under a fizzing blanket of an electric charge which Ronnie knows will spark into destruction very, very soon. He hopes they’re out of the valley before that happens. He hopes he’s
...woken up!
– Has he? Fuck me! Ronnie, boy! Welcome back!
Ronnie opens his eyes and sees a cat, at close quarters, walk by him, a black-and-white cat with a question mark for a tail. He sees a smiling moo-cow close to his face. Then he sees two faces, human ones, that he recognises, two faces close by his, and he feels himself levered up into a sitting position and he rubs the mucus out of his eyes and plaps his lips to dislodge the icky sleep-slime.
– Three fucking nights, man! The face called Rhys is saying, quite loud. – You were out of it for three nights! Getting worried we were.
– Just about to call a fucking ambulance, the face called Robert says. – Thought you’d slipped into a bloody coma or something, yeah? That pill of Red Helen’s, shit.
Pill? Red Helen? Knowledge enters Ronnie’s smeared head in several jolts and jerks. When he speaks, his voice is rusty with disuse: – Three nights? I’ve been asleep for three nights?
The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Page 5
