Ferst things ferst an that’s find them fuckin babyscals … trawl the city like til I fuckin find em … get the money … get that money back …
An then what?
Well, just tern up, I suppose … just stick it all in a bag an get the bus back out there an just tern up … say eeyar, am sorry … am dead, dead sorry … all I can fuckin do, innit? … just make it berrer, like …
Then get that fuckin Darren sorted. Make that bastard pay. Wish ad never seen im with that hammer … sick cunt … that poor ahl woman … God the way she fell … THUNK … one evil twat that Darren … has to fuckin hert people, dunny? Only way he’s ever happy, like, is when he’s causin someone pain … sick bastard …
But he’ll pay. He’s pure gunner fuckin pay, no lie.
Blood’s washed off an I don’t look too bad … bad bruise on me forehead, likes, but not too bad … least, a won’t stand out in this friggin bar … evryone ere’s gorrer shiner or a bent beak or somethin … I spy Kiwi’s black an shiny head at the bar … he’ll be good for a bevvy cos he’ll pay for the company, like, an I could really fuckin go a Guinness …
—Y’alright, Kiwi?
—Aye, Alastair, not bad, man, aye. What happened to the face? How’d yeh get that mark on yer ed?
—Gerruz a pint an al tell yeh.
—Brassic again?
—Yeh.
—What is it?
—Guinness. Ta.
He orders the bevvies an yeh should see the look the barman gives iz ed … we call im Kiwi not cos he’s from New Zealand but cos he’s baldy so he paints his head with black Kiwi shoe polish, all over, friggin sideys an evrythin … he’s off iz tree … when he gets hot it all runs down his face an yeh can see all the scabs on is ed where the chemicals av bernt the skin … he’s fuckin wacko, man, tellin yeh … an he don’t friggin stand out around ere, oh no … just blends in like with all thee other fuckin fruitcakes and mad’eds … oh aye …
—Eeyar, mate.
—Cheers, Key.
I take the pint an neck half straight. Key’s goin on in me ear burram not really lissnin cos am runnin through things in me ed:
Thievin bastard neds get found. Things are then made berrer. Darren fuckin Taylor gets iz.
Simple, lar, eh? Fuckin piss easy, man. Aye but this bleedin, this bleedin badness under it all … gorrer watch out for that, man … it’ll get yeh … no lie … it just waits n waits for the best time to fuck yiz up … all yer plans like … not werth two shits inny end …
Jesus me ed … this pain in me fuckin ed … always fuckin there, lar, always fuckin there irriz … bangin away …
This pint’s great, tho, sortin me brain right out. Kiwi asks me if I want another an I say yeh. Just one more, tho, just the one; I mean av got stuff to do, lar. Dead important stuff, like. Carn be angin round in the fuckin boozer all day, no way, man.
Oh me fuckin ed.
ROBBO & FREDDY: SOME WORDS AND PHRASES
YES! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSS!
Fuckin rich! (x 8)
Lar. (x 17)
They went down liker sacker shite, didn’t thee?
Man. (x 8)
No fuckin lie. (x 4)
We can do fuckin anythin. Fuckin anythin.
We’re free! Fuckin free!
Set arselves up in biz.
What yeh fuckin talkin about?
Loader fuckin beak.
Great big mounder bugle.
Step on it. (x 2)
Sell it on. (x 2)
Then buy two big moundser bugle.
Fuckin brewstered we’ll be.
Tommy Maguire.
Willy fuckin Hunter.
Peter the Beak.
They’ll sell us some.
We’re gunner be fuckin rollin in wedge.
Spain.
YEH! (x 8)
A fuckin shooter. (x 4)
Laughin.
Gunner be fuckin well sorted.
Is right. (x 11)
You know it. (x 11)
YES!YEEEEEEEESSS! (Again, and repeat to fade.)
EMRYS
Ah, Frank, my old friend. I knew you’d turn up. Knew as soon as you heard …
—I came as quick as I could, Emrys. I was right in-a middle of-a calving but I got Maureen to take over and came straightaway. Soon as I heard.
I take his hand. It feels so strange. This I think is the first time I’ve ever touched another man sober and by design in my life and it feels so alien, so utterly odd; I didn’t expect it to be so rough. It’s like sandpaper, or a cow’s tongue – hard and raspy and so, so dry. Is this what we’re like, to women? Do we feel like this to them, rough and unwelcoming? Like, like stones or something? Leathery like animals?
—I’ve, I’ve had a word with the doctor. He’s told me what there is to know. It’s not looking good, is it?
The tears just burst out. Just gush out. Frank takes his hand away from mine and I think he’s embarrassed and uncomfortable but then he has his arms around me and my face is at his shoulder. I can feel the prickles of his shirt against my skin and I can smell sweat and silage and cigarette smoke and earth and the deep stink of large animals and this is exactly what I need. These smells, the warmth of my oldest-known friend against me, this is exactly what I need. Is this what men are like to women? Do we smell good to them, do they need our arms around them? Are our shoulders strong enough for them?
Frank lets me rest there till the tears dry and I can’t cry any more, by which time his shoulder is soaked. He pats my back and moves away from me, over towards the drinks machine. I’ve been sitting here in this waiting area for the past hour; the surgeon wanted another look at my beautiful wife, another check-up he said, so he banished me here. But she’s my wife. I should be back by her side.
—Coffee, Emrys.
Frank hands me a steaming styrofoam cup of hot, black coffee. I look into it and its blackness.
—When was the last time you ate?
I shrug. Honestly can’t remember.
—Shall I get you something? Sandwich or something?
I shake my head.
—You should eat, Emrys. You staying here tonight?
I nod. —Yes. They said they’ll make me up a cot in the room.
Frank nods. —If you should need anything.
—Yes.
—I mean anything, Emrys.
—Yes.
Ah Frank, my old, good friend. So good to have you here.
—And you’re accepting it this time, my friend.
I look up at him, at his face; see the grey beard with the chaffs caught in it, the yellowing of nicotine at the corners of the mouth. Such a worked face, that; a face made by forty years in the fields and on the hills. Is mine like that? Do I too have lines deep enough to wedge a coin in on my face?
—You have to, Emrys, don’t you? You need a gun in the house, now. Don’t you agree?
I nod.
—Please tell me that this time you’ll take it. I’m not saying that you wouldn’t be here if you had’ve accepted the shotgun in the first place, but …
But that’s exactly what he’s saying. And I fear that he may be right; I mean, you don’t even have to pull the trigger, all you have to do is show it … Just before last Christmas or was it the Christmas before, there was an attempted break-in at the shop and Frank tried to persuade me to get a gun, even went so far as to offer me one of his own, an old but reliable double-barrelled. I was toying with the idea of taking it but then the Tony Martin thing happened and I imagined myself in that position, not only in jail but also with the death of a sixteen-year-old boy on my conscience and that was it for me, no thanks I said, I’ll take my chances. But now, though … well, Christ, things are different, now. Things have changed.
How they change. My beautiful woman, the way she looked astride that horse. All that promise and youngness in her. And the way she looks, is, now, here in this hospital.
Those bastards. Those two evil bastards. It was old Mr James who saw
them; out walking his dog and he saw the two of them running away from the shop with a bulging rucksack. A baseball hat, he said, one of them was wearing a baseball hat, and they were both yelling at each other in Liverpool accents. Didn’t see what car they drove away in because it was too dark but I reckon he was hiding from them, that’s my suspicion. He didn’t want to get involved. Like everybody, that’s what they always say, isn’t it? ‘I didn’t want to get involved.’
Cowards. I am surrounded by bloody cowards. This world is made up of craven bloody cowards. There are one or two exceptions. But only one or two.
—I’ll take it, Frank. Gladly.
He smiles and pats me on the shoulder. —Good man. You’ll feel safer with it in the house. I’ll feel better, too. Will you be home tomorrow evening? Shall I bring it round?
I nod. —I’ll nip home between six and seven, barring any changes in … you know …
—Yes. I can show you how to use it.
—No need. I was born on a farm, Frank, I’ve lived and worked on one all my life. I know how to use a shotgun.
He smiles. —Of course.
There is a burning sensation on my hand and I realise I have involuntarily squeezed the styrofoam coffee cup and some of the liquid has spilled over on to my skin. It will blister there, later. I should run it under some cold water but I am too tired to move. I am exhausted. Remembering how she looked, on that magnificent horse … it has sapped my energy. Every last shred.
I will accept the gun.
DARREN, HIS GRANDFATHER: SAPPER LEON TAYLOR OF THE LANCASHIRE FUSILIERS
As soon as the three-inch mortars struck the ground he dropped his rifle and ran. No; the moaning minnies were still airborne, crackling in over the treetops and his Lee Enfield and attached bayonet were lying in the mulch before the shells landed and he hears shouting and bellowing and sees faces in his vision splintered as he passes them and the earth heaves and then there is the unmistakable thump and concussion of a six-pounder anti-tank shell and the ground shrugs and tosses him, he is for a moment aware of being upside down and then the wind yelps out of him as he lands on his back in something soft, mud. Thick mud. His face is in it. He is inhaling mud. He flops and writhes like a landed fish on to his back and blinks mud from his eyes. Hears his own breathing stentorian as loud in his head as the bursting shells and the screaming and are they projectiles and body parts pouncing across the skyslice above the irrigation ditch or are they merely impurities, blots of dirt, in his demented vision?
Whatever they are he must flee from them. He must get away. He twists his arms backwards around himself to remove his pack and retrieve his entrenching tool but it is split and scorched by shrapnel and things spill; an enamelled dark brown mug, a cutlery bundle, a water bottle useless with rotten cork and torn felt covering and the Housewife holdall it too ripped and spilling in its turn as if in imitation of the bigger pack, balls of grey darning wool and fawn thread and black thimble and brass buttons and needles wrapped in tissue, these things artefacting the mud and sunk in that by Sapper Taylor’s knees as he rips his mess tin from his burst pack and begins whimpering to dig with that. The sky whines and shrieks above him. Chaos on the earth. His panting and pleading louder in his ears than the screeching flame and hurled metal deathbent and hysterical spitting heat and pinpricks on his head knocked helmetless.
Dig, dig. He has been airborne. The shellburst threw him as a man would fling a stone, carelessly and without effort. He can smell shit. Something also metallic like blood and thick, syrupy in his nostrils. Just muck in his eyes that he scoops and removes and scrabbles at just hide me hide me hide me.
—Oh please God fuckin get me out of this I will be good I will be good I will never again I promise to do Your bidding promise I will never –
Two immense swords clashing in the darkening sky above his back, above the ditch that shelters him. Strike and spurt sparks zipping in streams across that dusk and the rending of their metal is like a horde of screaming men.
Shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t fucking be here. Here men will be instantly stripped of courage and aggression and will become as children sitting in their own shite pleading for mother for God for sanctuary for – cowardice
—No fuck off no fuck off it’s too much this is I didn’t know I didn’t –
cowardice
And not even time to kill a man. Not even time to destroy a Nazi shoot the bastard see him crumple bayonet-charge them feel their bastard bodies give, plunge and twist like the corporal showed after grinning he stroked his bayonet lovingly held at his crotch like a dick back at the training camp back in Sussex back where he was
safe
A scream and the earth heaves. Another scream.
—Oh Jesus Christ oh Jesus Christ help me hide me I –
He vomits.
—Don’t let me die I want to live don’t let me die don’t let me pleasepleasepleaseplease –
This groove he’s made in the soft dark earth exposing two cones of rust, bullets from some earlier war, he curls himself into, hands cupped to his chin. His thin whimperings. Only a few feet above him he sees tracer bullets slash the sky in complete contravention of all he’d been told that such armaments were against the rules of warfare and will not be used but what he hadn’t been told and what gushes over him now as he lies in the ditch cowering and crying awash in his own fluids fevery hot and fear-drawn is the utter helplessness in the face of these demons who have put so much thought and practice have applied so very very much of their concrete collective will into the destruction of other peoples. These demons love war. They are war. Two decades ago they were crushed and in that short time they have built themselves back up again into this; this planet-wide wall of flame. What in God’s name can you do against this? What the fuck am I doing here?
Where is this even the sign said OUISTREHAM. Three fucking hours in France or is this Belgium just not home THREE hours only and now this, this cringing cowering mud pain terror.
PAIN. A burning spot on his lower leg he is aware of this now with the adrenalin running out and he reaches down to feel and his fingers sink into his calf. Sucked into warm mush and sharp jagged chips of something what can they be but bone.
—Oh God … Oh God … helpmehelpmehelpme please please … oh God save me …
His inner child wailing this high-pitched pleading. He pulls what’s left of his pack on top of him but bits of it still burn and he shoves it off. The explosions and screaming have ceased and he can hear voices now talking in a tongue that is not his.
He sits up. There is another figure close to him, in the ditch. There is enough light still for him to recognise this figure as Ernie Riley who he went to school with and to see also that there is a wound in his throat like a second mouth a toothless mouth on the side of his neck that drools blood black in the fading light. Wrecked muscle hangs in fronds over a jagged lightless hole.
Gunshots. Those non-English voices getting closer, louder, punctuated by single scattered shots. Ernie is trying to speak and more blood flicks with each attempted and aborted word. He clutches at Leon’s legs and his stiff fingers jab into the calf wound. Leon bites a scream back and jerks his leg away. Ernie’s eyes beg.
Shouldn’t even fuckin be here. Should be fighting with them demons and not against them those lords of war they will win, surely win, will walk the world. Straddle seas. Such ravening slaughterers what am I doing here pitched against them.
Someone will pay for this. Someone is going to pay for bringing him here to this muddy ditch in France beslimed as he is reduced to this caked and cringing state. They can light up the sky with the inferno of their will. Someone must pay.
Louder, the voices. Very close now. Ernie is scrabbling at his chest at the soaked serge of his shirt. His hands clench in the debris from the pack now utterly without use and something hard presses against his right palm. A familiar shape.
His jackknife. Made by C. Johnson & Co. of Sheffield. Marlin spike, tin opener, bottle opene
r, screwdriver. A useful little tool.
And stainless-steel blade. A very useful little tool.
He thumbs the blade out. Ernie is on top of him now, his gaping neck-wound up against his face and he pushes him away and looks elsewhere as he plunges the blade into that wound and rips to the left. Instantly his hand is hot and wet and Ernie bucks and twists and falls back against him facing upwards at the wounded sky. His face pressed against Ernie’s skull in his oily matted hair, hot fluid pumping into his eyes, into his silent-roaring mouth.
cowardice
They scrumped apples together, once. Sagged school and went fishing in the canal and caught nothing. Stole soda siphons from the backyards of pubs and cashed them in in grocers’ shops and with the pennies bought gobstoppers that turned their mouths purple. Met each other in the recruitment office on Lime Street. Drank beer together.
So cowardice
No, someone. Someone will pay.
A light sweeps across the ditch. Ernie has now stopped twitching and gurgling on top of him and he holds his heavy body tight to his chest. A nearby voice in the darkness grunts and speaks:
—Er ist tot. Ja, sie sind alle tot.
And this is how it sounds, the end of the world. Armageddon speaks in an excited voice, the voice of a child delirious with damage, his horrible and hectic excitement in those mere words.
This is it.
I will make someone pay. I promise the world that someone will pay for this.
Unconscious under a corpse, sinking slowly in filth. Torn, tattered, bone exposed to the rent air still spongy with cordite and burnt meat. These two tangled inside the crust of the upheavaling earth and which is dead and which still lives can be discerned only by the ongoing trickling and not clotting of snatched blood.
Wreckage Page 10