by Graham Joyce
—What's that then, Otto? I says.
—One fevver. Brilliant, it is . . .
—What? Depleted uranium? That's another story, mate. But you see what I'm saying? One PR job, two fucks and a headache. So who is the cunts? Eh? Eh? Who?
And when he says this Otto doesn't wink, no, but he pulls one eyelid down with his forefinger and looks at me with one blue eye, and I know who is talking to me. I don't know how long he's been there, sort of inside Otto, but it's him all right. I turn away.
—You all right, Seamus?
—I'm all right, Otto. Catch you later, son.
Otto has a way of trying to look after me. I don't need looking after, but he keeps checking up, see if I'm okay, all that. He tells me about depleted uranium. Tells me what it is. I didn't even know we were using it. Explains the flashes in the desert and the way those Iraqi corpses were all shrunk but their boots weren't burned. That had been bothering me for a long time. But with Otto there's always more. He reckons it can explain the illnesses I've been having these last few years. He reckons there's a lot of American soldiers been making legal claims, but their government isn't wearing it. Same as ours isn't wearing it.
I don't know. I just don't know.
Otto gets out of nick before me. I miss him. He's a good lad. He comes back and visits me once a week. He's got ideas about us starting our own security business after I get out.
But the migraines get worse, the internal pains get worse. When I do finally get paroled out, Otto is there to collect me. Takes me off to a pub called the Sandboy—yeh—for a slap-up lunch and a few pints, so we can talk about this security firm. We're going to call it AV Security to suggest "armoured vehicle" without saying it. We both know it's bollocks—ain't gonna happen. But we get pissed and talk about the nick and pretend like it is.
Out of the blue and after seven pints of flat Courage bitter Otto goes,—Believe in evil, do you, Seamus? Do ya?
—Eh? I notice he can't keep his foot still.
—We got mugged in this last lot, mate. Turned over. Done up the arse.
—Leave it out, Otto.
—Look Seamus, my nerves are shot. Your health is fucked. What for? Makes no sense we were even there.
—Strewth. Supposed to be having a good time, ain't we?
Otto's hands are shaking. He taps the table with his box of ciggies.—Sorry, mate. Drink up. One for the road, eh?
We never talk any more about AV Security. Otto gets a pay-out for his arthritis. He tries to help me with all the forms and paperwork and so on but the doctors seem to think all my complaints are in my head, so I get nothing. Anyway, Otto sinks his money into a toyshop. He says he wants to see happy faces. He offers me a job "dealing with stock." I took one look at his "stock" and realise he's just being kind. Plus I don't see myself lining up boxes of moulded plastic soldiers on a shelf.
After that I slipped. I lived in some odd places. Hostels. Squats. Derelict buildings. Stone me, I even washed up at the Sally Army more than once. And the Arab showed up in these places more than ever before. He told me it was easier in these places for him to get inside someone for a minute or two. I always knew when he was about to take someone over, maybe a fellow inmate at the hostel, maybe the Salvation Army hostel director, maybe some tattooed psycho sharing the squat. A fuzzy grey shadow would appear, like soot everywhere, there's no other way to describe it. Then their faces would go luminous for a moment, just for a passing moment. And the Arab would be there, maybe dropping me the wink, just talking, always talking, like he was trying to teach me things. Tried to teach me Arabic, he did, and older languages. Mathematics. Loads of stuff. I was no good at it. The migraines. Plus there was a particular thing he used to say, every time, every encounter, just to wind me up. I'm sure it was just to wind me up. Taunt me.
The terrible thing is that as I look back over the last few years, I don't know how I've lived. I can't remember most of it. It's a half-life. Sometimes I do wonder if I died that day in the desert. Took my foot off the mine and died, and this is me dragging on my way over. I've no markers, you see. No coordinates. I'm adrift.
I see Otto sometimes. I go to his toyshop and he hands me a few quid, to help me get by. But I wonder if he's dead, too? Died in Desert Storm like I did. It would add up. This is limbo. I don't know. A beer doesn't taste the same. A cigarette doesn't taste the same.
I don't know.
I was a soldier of the Queen. I am a soldier of the Queen. I have wept for myself in the dark.
Strange things happen. You might be standing in the doorway trying to hustle for a drink. I says—I'm trying to get a cup o' tea—and there's this dapper gent, reckons he knows me. Of course he knows me. His face lights and it's the Arab. Puts me in a cab, pays the driver. Takes me to GoPoint. What a place. It's crawling with ones just like the Arab. And there's this lovely girl. Antonia. She gets me writing. She gave me this exercise book to write in. Therapy. But I don't let anyone see what I've written here. Noone gets to see it. There's a good reason. Antonia asks to see it but I say,—No, my darlin'. No.
I keep the exercise book wrapped inside the Arab's red and white shemagh.
Yes, sometimes I wonder if I am dead, and sometimes I wonder if I'm still in the desert with my toe on the mine. It could happen. I'm well trained. Maybe I've just been there for like twenty-four hours and I'm still waiting for my boys to find me. Like I'm tranced-out but I'm still covering that mine, muscles locked into position, holding down that spring. It could be. It really could be. I'm well-drilled enough to make that happen. And maybe all these things that have gone on since Desert Storm are just things swimming inside my head. It would explain a lot.
So either I'm still alive somewhere with my foot on a mine; or I'm dead and for some reason I can't go over; or a third possibility is that it did all happen and what I'm left with is worse than the other two alternatives.
I think the Queen can answer my question. I think she is probably the only person on Earth who can. If I could find a way to talk to her she would make it all make sense. I'm going down to Buckingham Palace. They can change the guards all they like. I'm going to chain myself to the railings and I'm going to ask the Queen to come down and have a chat.
I want to take my foot off the mine.
It's been too long. I'm tired, even with all my training, I'm tired.
I'm not writing any more. This is the end of my will and testament. I said I keep this wrapped in the shemagh. This is not to keep other people out but to keep the Arab in. If anyone ever reads this, the Arab will pass over to them. The Arab told me that.
Not that you can trust the Arab. There's that other thing he's always telling me, though I know he's a liar. He's just out to get a rise from me. Every time. I don't take the bait. Every time I see the Arab I know that at some point he's going to reach with his forefinger to pull the loose flap of skin under his one good eye, and he's going to say:
—Seamus, there was no mine.
He's a liar. That Arab is a liar.
Chapter 33
You have to take your foot off the mine at some point. I chose the cellar bar of the Coal Hole near Waterloo Bridge, between the Thames and Strand. I liked this place, if only because William Blake lived and died above it; though in dreadful poverty. I liked William Blake because he saw angels and demons everywhere, too. Some of them were the same ones that I was seeing.
I also liked this pub because the cellar was the nineteenth-century meeting place of the Wolf Club, an actors' den of drunks, orgies and loose women. I don't know why, but I thought it would make a good venue to tell Yasmin the truth. All of it; all the stuff that had been holding me back from her.
Spill the beans, lift the skirt, open the box, shave the cat.
I asked her to wear her black and red cheongsam dress, the one she wore on the night when she wanted me to go back to her place but I ran screaming from the taxi. I thought if I lost her after telling her everything, then I could at least remember her in that dress. I kne
w I might easily lose her. It had occurred to me that when she became apprised of what a necromancer/nutter/functioning schizophrenic/whatever she'd been playing with she might want to leave in a hurry and without paying the bill. But then again I knew I could lose her any time after that, too. I was committed, come what may.
When we were settled into this old fornicator's den, its cellar creaking, she said, "You seem to have something on your mind tonight."
"Yes, I'm in a strange mood. Drink your wine. I'm going to tell you some stuff about me."
She put her hand on my wrist. "Listen: you don't have to. You don't have to tell me the slightest thing about yourself. No one comes without history. Least of all me."
It was an unexpected tenderness. She was trying to protect me. But I wanted her to know it all, so I began to tell her. I continued to tell her over drinks, and right through dinner. I lifted the stone from above each and every demon. I told her that I'd done things in my youth that had placed me beyond the comfort and shelter of love, and so I had conducted my life in retreat. That my neat suburban existence had been a refuge and my bureaucratic work a hideaway. But I also told her that I have paid a higher price than anyone to know what lies beneath the manicured suburban lawn, and to see what tormenting ghosts are at play behind the commuter's daily newspaper.
"None of this would matter," she said, "if you would just let yourself go with someone."
I answered that by saying that love is a fraudster. A demon with sweet breath. It tricks you into thinking you are unique; that you are the first lovers in the garden. She then said that my trouble is that I think everything is a fraud; that I think life is a con-artist; that I reckon the universe is out to get us.
She didn't agree with much of what I had to say that night. She claimed that love is Nature's way of showing you the very best of yourself; and that your best is different from everyone else's best. That it's Nature's way of scraping back the surface of a dirty world, so that everything can be seen again, cleansed, shining, luminous.
Oh, that Yasmin! I told her that her way of thinking was dangerous. And she said, "Yes, love is dangerous. It is supposed to be dangerous. It should be like rage. It should consume us, until the next time, and consume us again."
And I said that's dramatic, and she said yes, love is dramatic.
And then she said, "I love you. I always have. Right from that day you walked into GoPoint and I said, You don't look like an angel, and you said, Let's sit down."
And my dessert froze in my mouth, and I went, "What?" and some of it sprayed across the table.
It was like one of those moments when the band stops playing and you hear yourself shouting too loud, and everyone in the restaurant looks round at you. Except there was no band.
"What?" I repeated. "What did you say?"
"If this is an evening of confessions," she said, "it's my turn. Remember how I told you I used to work at GoPoint? With Antonia?"
"Yes."
"Well, it was only partially true. I did work there in a sense: Antonia asked me to organize a library out of all the books that were donated. So that was one of my jobs. I was actually an inmate. Rather than someone who worked there. What Antonia always generously refers to as someone in recovery. Do you still want to come back to my place?"
"Yes, if you'll pay the bill," I said. "Another thing I have to tell you is that I am completely broke."
We took a cab. Naturally I asked her to elaborate on what she'd said in the restaurant, but she refused to say any more until we were back at her place. She asked why I had no money. I explained that I'd given the whole lot—and some I didn't have—to Antonia at GoPoint. It made her scream. She found this funny. I didn't know why.
There was a cold, shared hall with paint peeling everywhere, and some long-dead post and junk mail littering the space inside the door. A flight of echoing, dusty stairs took us up to her room, which was neat and tidy enough but it was like a room someone is just about to move into or out of. There was a large bed with a white duvet and fluffy pillows almost fresh from the factory packaging. A hanging rail with a few dresses. An ancient central-heating radiator under the window kept the place warm.
The first thing she did was to pull down the blind and switch on the bedside light.
I said, "Do you have any wine?"
"Wine, no. Coffee we have." Still in her coat she went out to the kitchen to make the coffee. I took the opportunity to cast about the room looking for all the detritus of living that would yield up some more information about her, but there was precious little. Finally—and since there was nowhere else to sit—I perched on the edge of the bed, and waited.
When she came back, she handed me both mugs of coffee to hold so that she could take off her coat. When she'd done that she kicked off her shoes, kneeled on the bed and took back her coffee, never seeming to take her eyes from me. We drank the coffee in silence. I watched her lips on the rim of the mug every time she took a sip.
"Good coffee," I said after I'd finished mine. She found that funny, too. Again, I don't know why. I was proving to be pretty hilarious all round. "Do you know what this place reminds me of? It reminds me of a student room. You know, minimal."
"It's been a good while since you've done something like this," she suggested. "Hasn't it?"
"A bloody long while. I'm quietly freaking out here."
"It all makes sense to me now. You think you did something very bad when you were young; and now you think you're cursed and not entitled to anything good. You think you're not entitled to love anyone. You also think you have to do good deeds to atone. Hence everything you do for GoPoint."
"Well, that's overstating it all a little."
"Is it?"
I'm sure I sighed heavily and ran my fingers through my hair. "I'm sorry. I've forgotten all the dance moves."
"Dance moves?"
"What to say. What to do with my hands. Starting with what to do with my coffee cup."
She drained her own coffee cup and threw it over her shoulder and across the floor. It bumped on the bare board, but didn't break. She took mine from my hand and did the same with that one. It bumped into the corner of the room, also without breaking. It was a pleasing sound. It was a sound that said maybe we'd gone past the point of no return. It was a sound that said just surrender to the demon.
She shimmied closer to me, her nylons swishing on the white cotton duvet cover as she drew near. Close enough for me to tell the difference between her perfume and her natural body scent. Then she kissed me, and the kiss drew all the tension out of me and at that moment it was like something else came into the room, riding on smoke. Some dark enfolding power, black like sleep, red like embers, white with snowy wings. She held my face between her hands and gently pressed her tongue into my mouth. I felt myself going under; I wanted to swoon away, like a girl.
Perhaps because of that I put my hand on her breast. She moved it away. "No. Not until I've said what I have to tell you. I'm going to take off my dress but I just want you to hold me. Is that okay?"
I didn't know what was going on, but I said yes, it was okay. I watched her unbutton the cheongsam dress and take it off. I was hypnotised. She was like the snake-charmer. A slight shimmy or movement to the side had me almost swaying.
She made me lie back on the bed and took off my shoes before stretching out next to me, her head on my chest. "Listen to me," she said. "I'm going to tell you some stuff about me and you may not like me so much when I'm finished."
I lay there holding her, partly relieved that I wasn't expected to fling myself on her and rut like a porn star, partly disappointed that I couldn't.
"As I told you, I was actually an inmate at GoPoint. I was adrift. I was coming off a lot of drink and drugs at that time. Perilously close to a life of whoring. It's a greyer area than you think, especially if you can move in wealthy circles and your options for work are limited. A man buys you a bracelet, an expensive Blackberry device, a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. But he doesn't want t
o see you at the weekends."
"Ah! There's a name for a demon of that grey area."
"Benefactor. You realise what you've become and you hate yourself. You do it, but you can't get rid of your own conscience hovering at your shoulder, watching you, watching you."
Oh yes, I thought. Seen that.
"So you do more drugs, all so you don't even have to see that thing watching you. And you step out all sexy in your designer shoes. But you pull back from the good-time-girl thing, just at the brink. Where are you going to go? You live with a boyfriend; boyfriend gives way to a friend; friend gives way to an acquaintance; acquaintance gives way to a squat. Down the spiral. More drugs. William, I'm giving you the shorthand, right?
"I played in a band, been there, done that—I can sing, you know? I'll sing for you one day. More drink. And you gig, and you live rough and fast. You split from that scene and the drink is a need by now, not a choice, and that thing, that ape, that shape at your shoulder is following you everywhere; and then comes a night when you realise you have no resources, and no friends who will take you in, and I mean no one. And someone gives you a card with the words GoPoint on it and they say, here, it's pretty desperate but it will keep you warm for a few nights.