The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

by Victoria Hendry

  Praise for The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

  ‘One of the most engaging, powerful, original, heart-breaking books I’ve ever read. Archie is wholly credible … The spare, sparse language, the locations … are just magical.’ Manda Scott

  ‘This is empathy of outstanding quality. Taking us inside Archie’s war-ravaged mind, Victoria Hendry, with fine and often acerbic scrutiny, shows how our society responds to the traumatised service personnel of our overseas conflicts.’ Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘Unsentimental and unsparing, The Last Tour of Archie Forbes does for PTSD what Slaughterhouse-Five did for survivor’s guilt.’ Robert Morace, Professor of English at Daemen College, New York

  ‘Highly recommended. This depiction of PTSD avoids the clichés and embraces not only the complexity of the post-war experience, but also the absurdity of it all … Don’t be afraid to laugh as well as cry.’ Rodge Glass, author of Dougie’s War

  ‘A novel for our time in which a yawning austerity culture threatens to swallow up even the brave. From front line to food bank … a journey through the reality of Bedroom-tax Britain.’ Rev Dr Robin Hill, former editor of Life and Work magazine

  ‘As Victoria Hendry so ably demonstrates in this riveting novel, some of the wounds suffered by soldiers in modern conflict are those that are unseen, out of sight but never out of mind. Her compassionate understanding for the condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder marks her out not just as an exceptional writer but also as a sympathetic observer of the human condition.’ Trevor Royle, military historian and former Trustee, Combat Stress

  Praise for A Capital Union

  Shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown

  Book of the year selection, Alan Warner, Scotsman

  ‘A remarkable debut, with explosive moments of real poetry and narrative power. This is an excellent novel, very dramatic and engaging, with a Buchan thrills quality.’ Alan Warner

  ‘Startlingly accomplished … [this] impressive debut novel wastes no words. As the story gathers momentum so does Hendry’s prose, raising itself to poetry.’ Julie Davidson, Sunday Herald

  ‘Shows the terrible strain that … conflict can place on individuals beyond the battlefield itself.’ Edinburgh Review

  Also by Victoria Hendry

  A Capital Union

  The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

  The

  Last Tour

  of Archie

  Forbes

  VICTORIA HENDRY

  Contents

  Praise for The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

  Also by Victoria Hendry

  The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  Notes to the text

  Sources

  Glossary and notes

  Quotes of interest

  About the author

  Copyright

  He who eats alone, chokes alone.

  arab proverb

  1

  Archie counted his steps from the park to the bank: 460 – a third of a kilometre. The numbers filled his mind, kept his focus in the present, and on the childhood savings passbook growing sticky in his hand. If he was lucky, enough interest might have accrued in the intervening years to buy him a hot meal.

  As he reached the bank, his reflection followed him along the tinted glass window to the door and he pushed it open. Archie didn’t smile because there was something wrong with his smile. People flinched when he bared his teeth. His lips turned up alright, but when their gaze raised itself to his eyes on the smiling cue, what they read there frightened them, and he usually apologised and turned away. He couldn’t spot what scared them when he peered at his face in the mirror, leaning forward as he cleaned his teeth, or if he glanced at himself in a passing shop window. He looked like anyone else, but the sleepless nights written in the lines at the side of his eyes, the small, staring pupils – black dots zoomed in on far-distant memories of war – were unsettling. People looked down the wrong end of the telescope into the horror that played over his soul, hiding inside, barely held in by the muscles of his face – an almighty scream, a continuous roar of anguish. There was no place for it in this bank, this ordinary place with beige carpet tiles, sponged wallpaper and the company logo inlaid on the surface of the counter. So neat, so tidy, so well fitted together.

  The teller was wearing a hijab. Not one of those black numbers he remembered from Afghanistan, but a flowery scarf wrapped round her heavy hair.

  ‘That’s your copy, sir,’ the girl said, passing him a sheet of paper. ‘Just sign at the bottom to confirm you wish to close your account.’

  It was dated the 12th of September, 2013. She passed him £3.14, which had lain there untouched for years.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, looking up. ‘I thought it was September the eleventh. Like 9/11.’ Even as he said it, he knew he had made a mistake. Her mouth became a thin line. More than the Twin Towers had collapsed that day. Something about trust had gone too. Something about President Bush’s holy war had filled the gap – a war on terror – and Archie had become one of its foot soldiers. The fine dust of Afghanistan seemed to pour from his clothes. It sat in his pores, turning him a grey-pink. He saw the teller flick a glance at the security guard. What was it the brigade adviser had said? Use cultural empathy to build strong relationships. ‘Look. I’ve been in theatre,’ Archie said. ‘I get it.’

  ‘Which theatre? What do you get?’ she asked.

  ‘That 9/11 is nothing to do with you. I just thought it was the eleventh.’ He leaned on the counter. Talking like this was tiring. He’d been walking since 6 am when the church night shelter had turned them out. Early morning was the longest, coldest part of the day. ‘All friends together, eh?’ His face was close to hers. She turned her face away. He wondered if he smelled and sniffed under his armpits. She pushed her chair back. There was no glass barrier in this new world of free communication with the customer, just cameras, pointing their lenses like sights on rifles. Eyes everywhere; closeted in basements, watching; watching for cracks as they appeared in the happy picture; ready to send in agents to paper over them, to restore that happy normality that made money, filled bellies, fuelled cars and marriages.

  The guard who had been hovering near him ever since he came in walked over. Archie held out his hands. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not being funny. Genuine mistake.’ He turned to the girl, ‘Sorry,’ he said, and smiled his killer smile.

  The guard took his arm. Archie shrugged him off. ‘Let me take the three quid,’ he said. The guard nodded, and Archie scraped it off the counter with his too-big hand and slipped it into his pocket. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘No need to see
me out.’ He laughed into the silence.

  The guard watched him go. The old lady seated near the door kept her eyes on the carpet, as if wondering how all those tiles fitted together. Her husband looked up, saw Archie reach for the silver handle and spot the ‘Press to Exit’ pad only after he had pulled the door twice. Outside, the traffic stopped at the lights, and pedestrians began to cross with the jolt that signalled the start of movement after the moment when, just for a second, everything stood still.

  Pausing at the junction, he decided to walk to Leith, to the Homeless Writers’ Group. The tea was free. Crossing the Meadows, he passed from Princes Street, with its department stores and women window shopping, onto Leith Walk. The Walk was a huge downward hill, a long slope to a port that had once been great. It was lined with shops: second-hand furniture emporiums; quiet doors offering discreet advice to pregnant, single mothers who wanted to keep their babies; pawn shops dressed as bargain stores where, for enough cash to buy that week’s food – if you were careful – you could pawn your guitar, or your mobile phone, and hope that somehow, next month, it might be different. It was a place where you could allow yourself to believe that it might not be worse, because somehow, something always turned up, didn’t it? He looked into the window of the Polish delicatessen, past the peeling, white, vinyl letters that said ‘Polski Sklep’, and over the jars of pickles and sausage. It looked like a museum to another world, a sepia memory of a distant culture, trying to survive here on a concrete road, with crumbling gutters and bus fumes sticking in grey particles to the window. He drew a love heart on the glass, and then a cross through the middle of it. It was a gun-sight. A gun-sight, for fuck’s sake. He began to shake. A gun-sight. He leaned against the glass, his handprint obscuring the mark. The man inside the shop looked over and shook his head. He waved him on, and his lips moved to form words, the shape ugly, or polite, or indifferent, impossible to say. Perhaps he wasn’t even speaking to him; perhaps it was to the customer. Perhaps it was about the ignorance of the locals; this uncouth land that wasn’t home. Archie walked a few steps and bent over, feeling sick. A woman pushed her pram round him, looked at him as if he might be drunk. He walked on. Did he reach the door to the group five minutes later? Was it an hour? They were slow to answer the buzzer. A small metallic voice asked him to repeat what he had said. ‘I’m here for the writers’ group. The writers’ group,’ he said, and the door swung open on a room filled with computers.

  ‘Nice to see you …’ the group leader glanced down at her notebook, ‘Archie. Nice to see you, Archie,’ she repeated. Word perfect now. She waved him over to a seat pulled up at a central table with six men seated round it and two female volunteers, unmistakably better fed than the men, one bespectacled, one American. Specs and Peanut he called them in his head: a refugee from a lonely retirement and a gap-year student, here to launch their magazine into the e-zine forest on the internet. ‘Some kind soul, who wishes to remain anonymous,’ the organiser smiled at Mike, who called himself Archie’s new, best mate, ‘has donated a lemon meringue pie, or am ah’ wrang?’ she said.

  The group failed to laugh at the old joke. Specs passed him a cup of tea and a silver tin of sugar, with coffee-coloured lumps riding high on the white snow field within. ‘No sugar, thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Let me guess, you’re sweet enough,’ said Specs, and he imagined her head exploding like a watermelon hit by a practice shot. She stood up and mumbled something about putting the kettle on again. ‘Go, Suki,’ he said.

  The group leader looked over.

  ‘Suki put the kettle on,’ he muttered.

  ‘I’d like to remind the group of a few ground rules,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘The group operates on the principle of mutual respect – of kindness – of supportiveness.’ A passer-by paused to light a fag outside the window. She looked across at Archie, and her smile was pointed, dazzling. ‘So if we’re all on the same page? We’re going to discuss the contents of the next issue.’ Her head swivelled away. ‘I think you said you wanted to include something about the bedroom tax, Mike?’

  Archie looked down at his pie, steaming from the microwave. ‘Sorry we don’t have any forks,’ said Specs, standing at arm’s length. ‘Can you make do with a teaspoon?’

  He nodded. There was cat hair on her sleeve. Mike was reading a draft of his article about the bedroom tax in a sonorous voice – a poet, a prophet. ‘This unjust, unworkable tax penalises the most vulnerable in society, docking their benefit payments for a second room, even a box room.’ He paused. ‘I have cited an article in the local paper about the so-called help-line staff saying to that disabled man who phoned up to ask where his son could stay when he came to visit, “Ever heard of an inflatable bed?” An inflatable bed? That really got my goat. They expect him to go into a one-bedroom flat, only there aren’t any available. I’m going to have to move too. I can’t afford my second room. It’s going to cost me £14.95 extra per week. That will put me into debt.’ He looked round the room. ‘My article should get them rattled. That gives me some satisfaction.’

  Archie looked down at the table. ‘Why have you all gone quiet?’ demanded Mike.

  Them. Who was Them? The word sank into Archie’s stomach, reassembled itself with the pie into a picture-perfect world: mum’s home cooking, the crust just so; the army that looked after you, the country you served that loved you; that cheered you on parade on the High Street, marching from the Castle to Holyrood Palace, another long slippery slope, but lined with flags and bunting. The world he used to inhabit. The one where his wife waved in the crowd with his tiny son in her arms. The boy who was his spit. His spitting image. All watched over, kept safe, by the great, invisible Them.

  ‘John Swinney announced that the Scottish Government has earmarked several million to make sure that there are no evictions, Mike,’ said the organiser. Was she called Clare? ‘Something will work out.’

  ‘Something. Something will work out,’ Archie repeated.

  ‘That’s right, Archie,’ said Clare. ‘Something will work out.’

  This pie-in-the-sky compassion was killing him. ‘You’re killing me,’ he said.

  2

  That night in the hostel, Archie lifted up the end of the bed and put his shoes under the legs to keep them safe. It looked like a cartoon bed, or his granny’s legs – wooden sticks fitted into shoes that gaped like someone sailing in a boat standing up, a gondolier, a Charon on the Styx. If this pair walked like his last ones, then there would be hell to pay. The bastard had taken his phone too. These shoes were a Paul Smith designer bargain found in the charity shop in Stockbridge near where he used to live. The old neighbour behind the till hadn’t recognised him, or had pretended not to. He was getting used to it, choosing not to challenge them with a wry grimace, or a joke, and see the fear they tried to hide as his new face refused to morph into their memory of the man they had known: the financial lawyer; the lovely family man; the army reservist.

  He settled himself under the sheet and closed his eyes. Time stretched in a blank elastic as he moved across the bridge towards sleep, which was always one step ahead of him. He was returned to consciousness by the sound of sobbing. He could doze through the coughing and snoring, even the shouting, but the drip, drip, drip of this quiet exhalation in the dark, this seeping of misery from a would-be sleeper, denied his release into a dream world where there were no problems to solve, and food was abundant, and women were young and sizzling hot in short, short skirts … this crying pulled him even closer to the surface where he tried to float in the night, afraid to fall too deep into sleep; to where his memories roamed, hungry for the energy of his mind, ready to feed again on his mashed brain. It tripped his ears, which still rang with the rat-a-tat-tat of his gun jerking in his hands. The mindless chatter of death. He swam across the room to the weeping man and whispered, ‘Are you alright, pal?’ before reaching out to touch his shoulder. He stank.

  ‘Fuck
off, ya’ poof,’ he said, and spat. ‘Ah’m no yer pal.’

  Archie’s hand tightened into a fist and he punched him hard. The guy sat up. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘Ya bam. Ya fucking nut.’

  Archie backed away, looking down at his fist, wondering at the reflex that made it ball, the shout that triggered it, and he felt like a dangerous weapon: a cocked gun, the hammer just one press from driving the bullet into the chamber. The girl from the front desk appeared. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m going.’ He lifted his bed off his shoes.

  ‘Come and speak to me next shift,’ she said. ‘Try to calm down.’

  He nodded. They both knew he wouldn’t come back. His shouting was the loudest in the night. No one would miss him. ‘I mean it,’ she said, ‘don’t disappear.’

  ‘Too late,’ he said. ‘I’m Captain Invisible. King of the worst fucking nightmares you could dream up. The Kid of the not-Okay Corral.’ The light was beginning to show behind the faded blind, the faint dots of flies visible where they had been rolled flat in the morning.

  ‘At least it’s not cold out,’ she said. ‘You’ll get breakfast at St Philomena’s from seven.’

  ‘Yum, yum,’ he said.

  She pressed the door release and he braced himself for the buzz. Mechanical sounds were the worst. This world was never going to be silent.

  Outside, the sun was rising, its lemon light stretching between the trees on the Meadows, casting long shadows. His stick-man figure rippled over the grass and he sat down on the first bench he came to. He zipped his jacket up to his chin and relaxed his shoulders as he breathed out. A jogger went past fiddling with his iPhone, jogging on the spot in front of his bench before taking up the rhythm of his run, disappearing along the narrow track worn in the grass between the trees. A cyclist sped past in the opposite direction, padded Lycra bum raised off the seat to avoid the roots that snaked under the tarmac path, his briefcase strapped to his bike with bungee cord. Archie remembered those days. Days so busy with meetings that gym membership never paid for itself, and he had cancelled the direct debit and begun to cycle to work to keep fit. How was it that every second mattered then? There was no time to write those reports, far less read them; the synopsis was king, and coffee the fuel; days so fast that they melted together, and project deadlines and blue-sky thinking, and pushing the envelope were a new language that everyone spoke, confident in their jargon in the land of jargonese. Conquerors of the digital age. All friends in a huddle. There was none of that here for him in this park in a city centre, alone on an early autumn morning. He wondered what truths had been obscured in that land he used to inhabit as he drove the best deals forward, tested them against the law, found them watertight and collected his fee from companies so large they never challenged his gold-plated commission.