by A. J. Kirby
At first, waking up felt as unnatural as snorkelling. Everything felt wrong, as though I shouldn’t be able to breathe any more. When I tried to open my eyes, it was the visual equivalent of snorkelling. My body sensed that what it was doing was all wrong after so long on the other side and tried to reject this new place as dangerous too. They didn’t want to see. They said: ‘Better that place where it was simply nothing. Where there was no ‘me’ at all.’
But unwanted adrenaline was being pumped into my body. I started to feel things. I felt a hand on my arm. The sting and tear of another needle. The worrying numbness in my foot. An aching in my heart. I heard more distinctly now, too: whistling. The sound that I had mistaken for a song on the radio was whistling. And I even recognised the tune; some long dormant part of my brain informed me that I was listening to some interpretation of ‘Purple Rain’.
With a great wrench, I opened my eyes. At first, it hurt with a breathtaking teary sting, but eventually they became accustomed to the light. Started to pick out indistinct shapes. Colours shifted lazily into focus. I saw white, first.
‘Ah! Good evening , Lance Corporal Bull,’ said a voice that I thought I recognised. ‘Thank you so much for, uh, coming back to the land of the living. For a while there, I thought you preferred it over the other side… How are you feeling?’
I tried to focus, but could still only really see a white figure. It leaned over me and shone an even brighter light into my eyes. I tried to blink it away, but it was no good.
‘Turn that fucking light off,’ I croaked.
‘That’s more like it,’ said the man that I now remembered to be Dr. Montaffian. And as soon as that realisation set in, a deeper, scarier thought quickly followed. Involuntarily, my eyes shot down to my foot. It was wrapped heavily in bandages, but I knew. I knew.
‘You did it then,’ I croaked again. And this time, it felt as though I’d strained a muscle in my vocal chords. Christ! How long had I been out?
‘Your operation was a great success, uh, if that doesn’t sound too patronising after what you’ve been through,’ said Montaffian. I discovered that I could focus on him properly now. And if anything, he looked even more tired; his face was pallid and greasy-looking; his beard had become straggly now, like some Afghan goat-herder’s; worse, the bags under his eyes now stretched over his bloody cheekbones. He’d clearly been waiting a long time for me to emerge from wherever I’d been.
‘So, I’m footless and fancy free?’ I asked, trying a bitter smile on for size.
‘Only half footless,’ he corrected. ‘You’ll be able to walk in time, given the right, uh, motivation.’
At that point, I thought I’d never meet this ‘motivation’ character ever again; certainly I’d never shake him by the hand; certainly I’d never walk with him. And with that thought, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. My body felt as though it had been through several explosions again, as well as a mad flight across the Afghan countryside and a few rounds with Dr. Montaffian’s chainsaw.
‘Rest your eyes, Gary,’ he soothed. ‘Get your sleep while you can.’
And for a moment, I wanted to ask him exactly what he meant by that, but soon, I was plunging back down into that other place again, only this time the water felt warm and welcoming. No icy claws ripped at my body. I needed this…
As my mind clicked on to stand-by mode again, I heard Montaffian’s low whistling begin. ‘Purple Rain’ again; I made a mental note to ask him about it. I wanted to know whether he even knew he was doing it, and why he always whistled that particular song. But then I decided that I wouldn’t ask him; I didn’t ever want him to stop whistling. It was a comfort.
And for once, my dreams were happy; I dreamed about Montaffian with his big un-doctorlike tattoo and his ‘Purple Rain’ fantasy. I dreamed of him sitting astride this great big motorbike like Prince in the film of the same name, and just riding off into the sunset. I suppose the dream gave me hope.
Chapter Six
“When the jester sang for the king and queen”
It was hopeless. I was a hopeless liar, I knew I was. And everything I told them seemed to contradict something that I’d previously said. One of the military policemen – the taller one with the look of Tommy Lee Jones about him – actually spluttered with laughter every time I told another of my ‘fabrications’ as they called them. He was leaning against the gunmetal grey back wall of my small room, squeezing his polystyrene coffee cup as though he wanted to strangle the life out of it if he couldn’t do the same to me.
The other bad cop was even worse. He had pulled up a plastic chair right next to the bed and leaned forward on it so that his face was so close to mine, I could smell the cigarettes on his breath, despite the chewing gum which he was hammering away on.
‘Come on, Bully,’ he drawled. ‘You don’t expect us to believe that, do you? I believe that’s what you limey Brits call a cock and bull story.’
‘And you’re both the cock and the bull, aren’t you Bully?’ snorted Tommy Lee Jones.
‘Very funny,’ I sneered.
Suddenly, I heard the high-pitched wail of the plastic chair scraping back on the concrete floor. And then Chewing-Gum Breath was on me, hands round my throat, an elbow slammed into my ribs. I tried to push him away, but I still hadn’t regained my strength properly, despite the vigour of Montaffian’s prescribed work-out sessions.
‘Just tell us what we want to hear and then we can all fucking rest in peace,’ he roared, his breath tickling my face. ‘You think we like being in here amongst all the fucking invalids?’
‘I told you the truth!’ I gasped. ‘How many more times?’
And now, Tommy Lee Jones was on me too, from the other side. Close-up, I could see the pock-marks on his skin.
‘We know everything anyway,’ he said, his hand touching one of the drips in my arm. Threatening. ‘Just admit it.’
‘You’re a deserter; the lowest of the low,’ added Chewing-Gum Breath. ‘We know that already. Just tell us what went down at the Cock-up Mansion.’
Apparently, that was what the exploded building in the gully had now come to be known as. Cock-up Mansion, or C.U.M for short. The military loved abbreviations; so much of our language was made up of it. It made it kinda impenetrable to the outsider; special. But what wasn’t special, according to Tommy Lee Jones and Chewing-Gum Breath (they’d never actually introduced themselves) was the potential bad publicity which would come off the back of the almighty disaster which the Second Yorkshires and the Kingsmen had caused. So far, the full story had been covered up, mainly because nobody knew the full story. But now there was an unaccounted-for survivor, that meant everyone was quaking in their clod-hoppers.
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ I gasped. ‘I must have lost my mind or my bearings after the explosion and that’s how I ended up here…’
‘What about the red cross truck though?’ demanded Tommy Lee Jones, starting to pull the tube out of my arm. ‘Where’d you blag that from? There weren’t none of those in the vehicle roster for the mission up at the C.U.M…’
Now I’m not usually one that’s scared of the sight of blood or anything. But needles and tubes and things go right through me. And when Tommy Lee started pulling at that tube, I felt my head starting to go. And I mean really go. Way out west. Ushering reserves of strength that I never knew I had, I swung my arm upwards and connected with his pock-marked jaw, sending him reeling backwards and into one of the machines.
‘Now you really didn’t wanna do that,’ said Chewing-Gum Breath from the other side, but I swung an elbow into his chest, winding him.
This would have been the point that any sane and able-bodied person would have chosen to exit the room, but I was neither of the above and so I just sat up in bed and watched the two predatory animals as they started circling the bed again, but a little further off now. They’d been bitten-back, hadn’t they, and now they were less sure of themselves. Oh sure, the confidence would come back, and then everything
would be worse, but for now, I thought I’d done enough.
Thing was, I could have quite easily put an end to all of the questions by telling them about the makeshift British hospital that I’d been taken to directly after the blast. This would have cleared my name from the deserter’s list straight away. Only, when asked, I couldn’t have located it on a map. Nor could I have explained the mysterious disappearance of all of the staff and patients. I couldn’t have told them about – whisper the name – Tommy Peaker. Just mentioning that place would have opened up a whole shit-storm that I didn’t want any part of. And so, I knowingly told the half-truths that these guys recognised as such almost as soon as I’d said them. We were at a stale mate and neither side was ready to back down.
‘Tell us what happened to the men in your unit. How did you get off with just half a foot missing if the rest of them were all blown-up?’ asked Tommy Lee. He was goading me now. Hoping that professional pride would make me admit to something.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Look; all I can tell you is this: somebody radioed in that the building had exploded. And that somebody wasn’t me. Check with the records of our Comms HQ if you don’t believe me.’
Chewing-Gum Breath narrowed his eyes, surveyed my face for tells.
‘It’s something,’ said Tommy Lee, breathing heavily.
‘Check it!’ I cried. I hadn’t wanted to mention Do-Nowt at all, but this small concession couldn’t hurt, could it? And by telling them about Do-Nowt, I’d put the whole thing in doubt. If there was more than one body unaccounted for – as there would be – then clearly there was something more complicated at play. And if the military police hated anything it was complications. All I wanted to do was to push them in the direction of the cover-up. Get some of that heat off me.
Chewing-Gum Breath still wouldn’t stop staring at me, waiting for me to wilt, but I stared him down. Eventually, he collected his coat from the back of the fallen plastic chair and started to walk away to the door. Tommy Lee followed, not speaking either. As he reached the door, he faced me once again. I half expected him to come out with the old Columbo line: ‘Just one more thing,’ but he didn’t. Instead, he simply said: ‘We’ll be back tomorrow whether this checks out or not. So you’d better hope that it does…’
Dr. Montaffian wasn’t actually supposed to be responsible for my physiotherapy. They had the big orderlies for that, as well as the actual trained physiotherapists. But he said he enjoyed it. Said it was therapeutic for him to spend time putting somebody back together rather than taking them apart all the time.
‘Most of the wounds we get here are so bad that the only thing for it is amputation,’ he said, allowing me to rest what must have been almost my full weight on his arm as I rested. ‘And Dr. Prendergast usually does most of the operations to repair internal organs.’
‘He the vampire-man?’ I asked.
Montaffian laughed and nodded. ‘Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Which is worse: looking like a, uh, vampire or looking stupid?’
I felt my face flush red, remembering the insult.
Montaffian smiled a fatherly kinda smile: ‘Don’t worry ‘bout it, Gary. I know you were hurting… And you know that I’ve told you before a hundred times your physiotherapy don’t just have to be for your foot. We’ve got people here that can give your mind a bit of a work-out too, if you’ve a mind to meet them?’
‘And I’ve told you a hundred times that I’m not interested,’ I said, propelling myself forward again onto the long corridor. And although Montaffian still had a hold of my hand, I was able to put more weight on my half-foot than I’d ever done before. Maybe I’d finally met that character ‘motivation’ that the doc was always chuntering on about.
Walking without your toes is no mean feat, if you’ll excuse the pun. I once saw this documentary where they said that if a man loses just his little toe, he’s liable to lose balance completely. And with all the toes gone, my balance had simply gone to pot. It was getting my head around walking in a different way that was the problem. I’d do two or three good steps and then simply revert to auto-pilot, try to press down with the front of my foot, forgetting that it wasn’t there… Only Dr. Montaffian’s close presence meant that I didn’t cause myself some serious damage. In the olden days, back in Newton Mills, if I’d have seen a man staggering along in the fashion I was, I’d have given him no end of shit for it. But now the boot was on the other foot. Now it wasn’t half as funny.
But the reality of the situation meant that I dug in. I was determined to get away from the hospital, from the close attentions of the military police and from Afghanistan full stop, and if that meant that I had to work extra hard, then I was used to it, wasn’t I?
I felt as though I was a new-born, staggering down that corridor, wobbling like a goddamn weeble. I was tottering like a toddler but my face must have been contorted into a very adult grimace as I took a second and third steps and tried to remember the age-old system which is setting one foot in front of the other. From behind me, I heard Montaffian’s breath starting to race, like he was the proud father capturing the image of his son’s first steps for the old memory bank. I ignored him. Pressed on, feeling the memory of a million steps already marched in my aching knees and wasted thighs.
Somehow, I reached a seating area, about twenty metres down the corridor. Mustering up all the grace I could, I lowered myself into one of the plastic chairs and wiped the sleeve of my pyjama top across my forehead. Montaffian soon caught up:
‘Fantastic, Gary,’ he breathed. ‘One, uh, small step for man, and all that…’
I looked up at him, caught that glittery look of approval in his eyes before he had a chance to extinguish it fully. And I suppose that in that moment, the little Yankee, saw me as some kind of hero.
But I knew that Montaffian also felt terribly, terribly sorry for me. He’d seen the way that I thrown myself into the physiotherapy and must have believed that I was somehow trying to make myself strong in order to fight again or something. He didn’t know about the hold that Newton Mills and Tommy now had over me. For like a small moon, Newton Mills affected the tides of my emotions. I had to make myself strong enough to get back there. I dreamed about the place on a nightly basis. I dreamed about what nightmares were taking place before I’d even had the chance to warn any of them that it was coming.
After a while, I began to see the missing foot as an inconvenience. I cursed my stupidity in allowing myself to give up as I had in the British hospital, simply allowing those rats to gnaw at it. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I did feel an itch where the toes once were. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the manky misshapen nail on my big toe; the one that had fallen off in my football boot once and had never grown back. Once, I’d been afraid to wear flip-flops as everyone else did when we were in mufti. I thought that the sight of my toenail would offend them. I’d now developed this kinda displaced attachment to that nail; I wished that I could see it again.
Now, when I steeled myself to look at my left foot, all I saw was a mess of candle-wax, almost like Tommy’s face. They’d taken new skin from my thigh – taken two great strips in fact – and had kinda melted it over the edge, where they’d cut away just past the knuckle where the toes are. I couldn’t imagine a woman ever even looking at my foot again, let alone giving me a foot-rub. Even I found it disgusting.
And it was getting in the way of my leaving. It was getting in the way of my return to Newton Mills. When the stern-faced military police returned, they noticed the change in me straight away. No longer was I the desperate victim that they’d interrogated earlier; now they could see the Kingsman that I’d once been. Some of my men were in danger, and I was prepared to do anything that I could to get back to them and lend a helping hand.
I’d not seen them for three, maybe four days since their last visit, when I’d clocked Tommy Lee Jones. But when Montaffian let them into my little room early that morning, I slap-bang knew straight away that something had changed in them as we
ll as me. Chewing-Gum Breath was wearing a freshly-pressed white shirt for the occasion. When he entered, he neglected to take up his usual position, on the plastic chair, threateningly close to the bed. Instead, he lingered by the wall, like Tommy Lee had done before. Tommy Lee himself seemed chastened; far less overbearing. Even his pock-marks seemed less goddamn angry. It was as though they didn’t want to get close to me, somehow. I wondered what the hell they’d found out.
Evidently they didn’t want to tell me straight away. For a while, we all maintained this stubborn silence until Tommy Lee could bear it no longer and he cleared his throat. ‘Well, Bully,’ he began, ‘it looks like most of that cock and bull story you gave us checked out.’
They exchanged a mysterious look. Inside, I felt my heart leap, but I betrayed no outward sign of emotion. I hadn’t expected to get away with things this easily. Surely the intel I’d given them about Do-Nowt’s radio call hadn’t changed everything this much. Or was there something else at play? Something more powerful than even the damn military police?
‘The Brits have advised that they… They want us to let you go home,’ muttered Chewing-Gum Breath, staring resolutely at the floor.
‘No more questions asked,’ continued Tommy Lee. ‘How’s that sound?’
‘I thought you said there’d be no more questions,’ I snapped, keeping my hands under my head despite the ferocious gleam which appeared in Chewing-Gum Breath’s eyes. He wanted nothing more than to slam into my unguarded chest again. He wanted to shower me with punches. But something was holding him back.
‘Of course, we’ll be keeping your file open… should anything else crop up,’ said Tommy Lee, trying to placate Chewing-Gum Breath as much as giving me the required information.