by Simon Cleary
He stares at it inside its plastic bag, blood red, his temples beginning to throb. Phelan sees the tiny green light, hears the camera whir and then click. There’s a violent pull at his gut. He hears neither Penny arrive nor Blake leave. She’s just there, standing beside him, resting her hand on his shoulder. She doesn’t ask what he’s doing, staring at the little plastic bag on his desk. Says nothing about the bottle of Jameson’s and the tumbler resting on his thigh.
‘That was Tony Gruen, wasn’t it?’ she says. ‘The vehicle that just left? The one I passed coming in?’
Phelan nods.
‘This is from him?’ She doesn’t really need an answer to that either. She picks up the bag, opens it and squeezes the stick out, as if pressing ointment from a tube. It slides onto the palm of her hand and she inserts it into the laptop, fetching a second chair while it loads. Phelan’s hands shake as he pours another whiskey.
Penny doesn’t ask him if he’s ready, nor ask herself either. She recognises the name beneath the icon on the screen, Chora Valley, and the date and opens the drive. A video. Outside the window the row of pines glows amber in the setting sun.
The footage expands to fill the screen, and suddenly it is 1645 hours on 4 November 2010 and they are in Afghanistan and they are on a narrow path, and they are Sapper Samuel Beckett and they are approaching the hour of their death.
Phelan gasps and his body recoils and in its reeling away from the screen his chair topples and crashes to the floor and he stumbles from the desk till his back thuds against the wall behind him, and he is jammed into the corner of the room, and there is nowhere else to go, and his hands are over his face, and he is trying to breathe, and he begins to slide down the wall till he is crumpled on his knees in the farthest corner of the darkening room, his head and hands pressed against the floor. He begins to bang his forehead and to groan, and Penny is beside him. Reaching for him, rocking him, nursing him.
She lifts him up and leads him out of the house. The entire western sky is aglow. She holds his hand. He is stiff. She walks him along the road, past the cottage and up to the top of the hill and then back again. There is the sound of their shoes on the gravel, the sighing sun, the first stars bursting into being. At the gate to the house she turns him around again and they head back up the hill. She is exercising him, back and forth, up and down the hill and back up again. The cottage lights turn on as they pass. Kira’s and Blake’s silhouettes would be visible if they looked. The sun disappears.
Phelan shudders. Penny feels him tremble and then slowly begin to sob. He moves to pull his hand from hers, but she clings tight. She leads him back to the house, back to the computer. She rights the fallen chair. The room is dark but for the glowing monitor. They step onto Beckett’s path once more. Penny grips Phelan’s hand as they go, checks he’s ready, their shoulders touching.
There is a mud wall to their left, waist-high, and beyond the wall an almond grove. The camera swings from the trees in the grove to the ground at their feet, to the buildings up ahead to their right, and back to the trees. Rays of sunlight pierce the trees – a short, brilliant kaleidoscope – then disappear. The path stretches ahead in a silent rhythm of bootstep. They march to the beat of an inevitable countdown, their hearts constricting.
They swing around to see what is behind them, too fast to fix on anything in the arc of stripling shadow and febrile light. They see a patrol of men behind, soldiers on the path, others among the trees. Way back in the distance a river and a bridge they’ve just crossed. One of their colleagues signals to them, a raised hand. They turn their head again – only a few more degrees – and there is Brigadier Phelan. Their gaze pauses on him, a juddering moment of dislocation, before sweeping on, halting, and turning back again, past Phelan, past the others, back to the path ahead, and back, eventually, to their steady footsteps on the ground.
But he has recognised himself.
Penny too. Her husband is beside her, and simultaneously trapped inside the footage on the screen. She has experienced so many versions of this narrative already. She has imagined it. She has read accounts of it. Has sat in storytelling circles in the hospital while Phelan tweezered parts of it from his brain. Has felt her husband convulse to it, nightmare after nightmare, beads of sweat pouring off him, little spheres of toxic memory seeping into their bedsheets, poisoning her too. And she has seen three still images ripped from life and all its bloody context, dark with portent, brutally effective.
The blast, when it comes, is almost a relief. There is a flash, but it is too bright to illuminate anything. There is jagged flash, and then there is storm, and in the spit and chaos of that cosmic tempest only swirling particles of dust exist. Phelan and Penny are buffeted by the ferocity of the static on the screen. It is all around them. Their ears are pummelled by every violent sound their imaginations are capable of conjuring. A nihilistic roar.
Then darkness. Dust and dirt and devil breath. As the world slowly lightens, it is because the storm is blowing itself out, and things begin to reconstitute themselves. The dust begins to settle, the earth to fall back into place.
They watch and wait and moment by moment things take shape, but what? It’s as if their sight is damaged, as if specks of dust have blown onto their eyeballs. Only gradually do their eyes adjust to their new world.
The first thing they understand is that there are two planes, one of dark and one of light. Then they realise they are no longer upright, but lying on the ground, their heads at an angle to it, the dark earth close by, eyelash-touching distance away. Through the grit and dust, past a nearby dark mass, the trees of the grove slowly emerge, backlit, trunk after trunk. The angle of their heads resting on the ground causes the trees to run horizontal to the world rather than upwards. It is disorienting, but the trees are the first certain things, and their eyes fix upon them. They are learning to see in this new world. Other things – a snapped twig, pebbles, rocks, a mule tethered to a distant boulder. What looks like a bird’s nest in the branches of the nearest almond tree may be a hive or a burl.
They realise the elongated dark mass close to them is their right arm, stretched out as if in sleep, their hand pulled into a fist. Their head is not moving. Their eyesight is fixed. Penny wonders if they are dead already.
Phelan knows they are not. Not yet.
He knows what is happening around them, though they cannot see. He knows a firefight has begun. He knows the practice of warfare is unfolding about them – locating the source of enemy fire, returning it, signalling to each other, estimating how many enemy there are, giving cover, screaming, Man down! Man down! He knows too, that he is closer than anyone to the fallen soldier, knows that by whatever impulse, by whatever alchemy of training and instinct and fate, it will be he who runs-scrambles-dives-falls and then lands beside Sapper Beckett.
Phelan’s arrival, when it comes, is violent, breaking the peace. One moment they are gazing languidly out through the trees, the afternoon light as golden as any fairytale’s, the silent earth a steady pillow for their resting heads. Then a soldier’s body explodes from nowhere and lands in front of them. The earth shudders. They cannot see all of him – his camouflaged torso is too huge and takes up most of their field of vision. His weapon lands awkwardly between them, his gloved hands gripping it tightly. They recognise Phelan’s forearms, the neatly rolled cuffs. Even then his skin was old.
There can be no looking away now. There is no sound, but they see Phelan speaking.
Phelan remembers. His first low, urgent word, Sapper! His body coursing with adrenalin, filling with an unfolding moment he doesn’t yet understand. Sapper! And his hand reaching for Beckett’s shoulder, shaking him, fearing already it is a corpse he’s trying to force a response from.
Then Beckett groans. Or cries. Some animal noise, some ancient trench-wail. Phelan recognises it, knows he’s finally here. At Tet. Or Milne Bay. Or Fromelles. Gettysburg. Jericho. The very plains of Ilium. How many h
umans have expired like this? Ten million, a hundred million? What brotherhood of the slaughtered is Beckett about to join?
But then, after the cry, a word. Charlie, the wounded man says, Charlie.
You’re all right soldier, Phelan says instinctively, you’re going to be all right.
Phelan takes off his gloves, and lays them aside. He removes Beckett’s dark ballistic glasses, and Beckett blinks and groans again. His eyes wide, blinking madly, as if he’s entering the world afresh. You’re going to be all right, Phelan says again as Beckett turns his head to him, looking at him now. Is it terror or is it wonder, Phelan thinks, something newborn in the sapper’s shutter-flashing eyes? Charlie, the soldier says again. Phelan doesn’t know what to say, whether to acknowledge the name, or even how to. Whether even to say anything at all. He puts Beckett’s glasses back on to help with the light, to ease the blinking – There you go mate – and pulls down Beckett’s vest from where it has risen up around his throat.
Phelan’s radio sparks. He chooses his words with care. He’s alive, Lieutenant. But wounded. They’re for Beckett as much as the patrol commander. Fuck! he remembers suddenly. He hasn’t even examined him yet. All these seconds passing, and he hasn’t even done that. But what an examination it is. He’d thought at first glance, diving beside him, that Beckett’s right leg was folded under him, that the blast had only landed him awkwardly. In truth he wasn’t capable of conceiving, in those first few moments, that Beckett’s leg was gone. Obvious now he’s looking, but he hadn’t seen it, couldn’t see it. Now he’s aware of the blood gushing out, darkening ripped trousers, darkening ground. His hands fumble and grope from pouch to pouch. Where did he pack the field dressing? If he was combat-ready he’d know instinctively. He ignores the radio. Fuck. He rips the bandage out, but what sort of fucking job is he asking it to do? Where to try and get a handle on Beckett’s thigh and how to staunch the blood. He rummages through Beckett’s webbing and finds a tourniquet nestled against the chest of his plate carrier, larger, and ties it to Beckett’s stump. His hands are dark red and wet now. There’s a thigh without a leg, and all Phelan is doing is trying to hide this truth.
And then a plea. Charlie, my cock, my nuts. Are they still there?
Phelan’s not sure he’s heard right. It’s all right, mate, you’ll be okay.
I want you to check, Charlie.
This calm. This seriousness, and Beckett lifting himself up on his elbow and trying to roll his hips so Phelan can get at him.
Okay, mate, okay. Just—
The rounds are still flying overhead. Phelan touches Beckett’s cheek.
My nuts. Tell me, Charlie. Tell me.
Phelan is looking into his eyes now, and the sound of the firefight around them and the blood-mud ditch is somehow fading away, replaced by this urgency.
Have a look Charlie.
Phelan’s heart is pounding. He unbuckles Beckett at the waist, and reaches into his trousers. Phelan feels Beckett through his jocks. He’s moist, but it’s not blood, not yet. You’re all there, son, Phelan says, their helmets touching, fire above, you’re all there. But as Phelan holds him in his hand he feels the warmth begin to leave him. There’s nothing to worry about, got it? Nothing to worry about. You just hang on, son. The medevac will be here any minute. Any minute.
Thanks Charlie, he says. Or Phelan thinks he says, thinks he remembers.
Beckett closes his eyes and his body relaxes.
But now what? Does Phelan keep him awake or help him sleep? No answer comes, nothing he remembers. Nothing announcing itself as wisdom. No grace, clear and sure. Just the fear of impotence, a gaping terror, wide-jawed. He takes his water, splashing it over Beckett’s face, roughly at first, then more gently, cooling Beckett’s forehead, cupping some into his hand and raising it to Beckett’s lips. Once he starts tending him he can’t stop till he’s emptied his last water bottle, washing dirt from Beckett’s cheeks, his fingers leaving muddy prints on the boy’s skin.
Phelan’s mouth is suddenly dry. Looking back, this is the moment that changed everything, this. If he’d chosen differently he might have survived. That’s what he’ll later think, a thousand times, ten thousand. That if he’d chosen a different course at that precise point in time, he might have been able to confront his judgements, might have got through this war, this life, more or less intact. But his mouth is parched. He swallows and his throat chafes against itself, and for a split second he cannot breathe for thirst.
He looks at Beckett again. Beckett at peace. He knows what he is about to do is wrong. But there is no stopping it, and he leans in to Beckett, and rolls him, searching his pouches till he finds water, and slugs it, the radio cackle-cackle-cackling. Phelan slaking his need.
When he is done he turns towards Beckett’s face again. As he looks, Beckett’s repose breaks. A fluttered eyelid, a groan as long as eternity, something expiring, something, what?
After Beckett dies, he radios it in, one KIA. The words pour from the radio, calm but urgent, louder than the rounds, more insistent, but Phelan can’t put them into any order. He sloshes the last of Beckett’s water over the crotch of his trousers, where, he realises, somewhere in all this he’s pissed himself.
He lies back and waits. He sees a falling star or an insect trapped in a shred of light. The radio noise seems to disappear into the vestiges of the day, and the fast air arrives. There is roar and there is vibration and above him Apaches rend the sky. The fabric of the very universe is torn, every star undone, every bird winged and tumbling. If the world were to explode, would the sound be any louder? Where would deaf Icarus land? Beside him here in this ditch?
He sees the rockets leave the helicopter, one-two, and then the compound disappears into a cloud of dust that in its own good time will fall and settle. The molten wax of Icarus’s feathers. The picture books would have the beautiful boy tumbling to earth, feathers detaching as the wax melts, his body falling faster than the feathers floating high above him now. That look of terror on the young prince’s face. That knowing.
But where are the paintings of ruined Icarus after he’d hit the ground? Where the depiction of the limbs so busted they are unrecognisable, the burst organs, the blood seeping from mouth and nose and eyes?
Yet it is not Icarus beside him. Beckett’s body is not proof of pride, lest it be a nation’s. Not the cost of folly, unless it be his country’s. Lest it be his. Phelan cannot look.
Three soldiers join them after the Apaches have cleared the insurgents from their compounds. The hands of one – the medic – are moving frantically.
‘He’s gone,’ Phelan says. The medic ignores him. The other soldiers are yelling at him now.
‘Are you wounded, Sir? Are you hit?’
Suddenly all the sound is in his head, the steady pulse of his blood building until it stabs at his temples, his eyes. The roar of the falling sun. Phelan grabs at himself, trying to knead the pain away with his knuckles. Then the medevac passes slowly overhead.
The soldiers stretcher Beckett’s body back down along the road to a clearing as if following the path of the chopper, the medic close behind. Phelan jogging now too, other soldiers surrounding him, shielding him, ready, despite everything, to take a round for him.
Plateau of Love
He weeps but Penny does not go to him. His head is in his hands at his desk and he is shaking in the dark, but she is calm. She is detached from all this. He shakes Beckett free, sob after sob. This release. Releasing him, releasing her.
What had been her war, too, no longer is. No longer is Beckett a black hole sucking her inexorably towards his centre, no more is he a malevolent creature reaching his clawed hand towards her. There is only this weeping man and this night. Everything changed. Beckett has died again, for the last time.
She leaves her husband. In the kitchen there are teapots and water tumblers and cheap crockery. There are shelves stocked w
ith food and medicines. At the other end of the phone, if she needed them, or when it is time to bear good news, are her mother and her sister and Bec. She is calm and she is sure. The glow from the fridge light is miraculous as she opens the door to get the water jug, a burst of illuminating wonder. Even though she’s not yet sure what she is celebrating. On the verandah she can still hear him sobbing behind her as she bends to put on her boots. He will not die from this. He will be okay, and now, finally, there is a chance they will too.
She does not need a torch. She knows the way. There are the shadows to guide her. The arch of the timber trellis. The edges of the path. The line of cypress pines. A beast lows in the valley. It is a beautiful sound. The cottage ahead is lit up. She sees Kira’s silhouette moving, first in one room, then another. There is, after all, nothing to fear, nothing to forgive. This is the thing she wants to tell her, but how? She doesn’t know, but she will find a way. And the growing boy, his birthday approaching, his beautiful life ahead of him. This plateau of love and forgiveness. There is, after all, a place for all things.
Too Much Light
Blake leaps down the steps with the birthday kite in his hands. From the cottage, Kira and Phelan and Penny watch him go.
‘Shouldn’t you show him what to do?’ Penny says to Phelan.
‘He’ll work it out,’ Phelan replies.
‘Thanks,’ Kira says to both of them. ‘For everything.’
Phelan bends to pick up the torn wrapping paper with its sailing-boat patterning. He carefully peels off the sticky tape, then lays the paper flat on the table, smoothing it out with his hardened fingers before folding it once, twice, and leaving it neatly in the centre of the table for Kira should she ever wish to use it again. ‘Come on,’ he says to his wife, reaching for her hand.
Penny hesitates. She wants to stay. She wants her husband to leave so she can make tea and the two women can talk for a while, nothing else in the day ahead to get to. She meets Kira’s eyes and smiles.