Pink Mist

by Owen Sheers

  He put his hand on the back of my neck.

  TAFF

  Good for you, but.

  Yeah, I can see that, makes sense. It does.

  So when you leave?

  ARTHUR

  A fortnight. Up to Catterick for basic.

  TAFF

  For how long?

  ARTHUR

  Six weeks.

  TAFF

  And then?

  ARTHUR

  Could be anything. Don’t know where, or when.

  They went skiing last winter. Or exercise in the Rockies.

  TAFF

  And Gwen. She alright with this then?

  ARTHUR

  Yeah, she is. It’s good money innit? And gets better too.

  TAFF

  Yeah?

  ARTHUR

  You know, promotion. Or if you go away.

  HADS

  Away?

  ARTHUR

  ‘Yeah’, I said, turning to Hads. ‘Iraq. Afghanistan.’

  HADS

  To war you mean?

  ARTHUR

  Yeah. They’ve already been.

  But that’s why now’s so good?

  It’s like my recruiter said today,

  it’ll be a chance to do the job

  they train you for.

  Otherwise it’s like going to the fair,

  but staying off the rides.

  So yeah, I want to go to war.

  HADS

  You’re nuts, man. You serious about this?

  ARTHUR

  Course I am. Like I said, it’s done. I joined today.

  TAFF

  Two weeks you say? Before you go?

  ARTHUR

  Yeah. If you joined up now, you could too.

  The sound of wind on a high hill

  ARTHUR

  I could tell Taff was in, he wouldn’t say no.

  He’d been having a shit time for the last few months.

  An apprentice on crap pay to a St Paul’s plumber

  who got at him all day.

  Then back to his high-rise with Lisa and Tom.

  He loved them, don’t get me wrong.

  But it was hard on him too.

  Man of the house at just eighteen,

  but not earning enough to clear the debt,

  get them out of the rough.

  Taff was hungry for a change, I could taste it off him.

  He wanted more,

  and now I’d put it in front of him,

  that meant The Rifles, war.

  But Hads, well, he was younger than us,

  only seventeen back then,

  still lived at home with his mum and old man.

  Taff took a swig on his cider, looked hard at him.

  TAFF

  Waddya reckon?

  ARTHUR

  Hads just looked back, bit his lip,

  like he couldn’t believe this could happen.

  Then he turned away,

  stared over the heads of the drinkers and dancers.

  He was the youngest, but also the tallest.

  Good-looking lad. Somali cheekbones from his dad,

  Green eyes from his mum. A one-of-a-kind kinda kid,

  which is how we were mates.

  I’d seen him defend hisself since he was six,

  firing-up much older boys.

  You had to give it to him, good with his fists, up for the fight,

  even then.

  But now – he shook his head, still looking away,

  before turning back to say –

  HADS

  Nah, can’t do it, sonner. Not for me.

  Just started up at Next innit?

  Up at Cribbs Mall.

  It’s a good job. I ain’t gonna throw it away.

  I mean, good luck, mate, really,

  But nah. Me mum would kill me.

  And my old man.

  Count me out of this one,

  you boys is on your own.

  ARTHUR

  But the seed was sown.

  There in the Thekla’s hull, with the cider inside us,

  and Massive on the system.

  I didn’t say nothing to Hads right then,

  but I knew, I did.

  He would come too.

  Cos I mean, what’s next after Next?

  Hauling his arse up to Cribbs every day.

  For what? A couple of years on the floor,

  then, if he’s lucky, assistant manager, maybe,

  after time served, more –

  a nicer suit, some girl off the perfume store.

  Nah. Hads was made for bigger things. He wouldn’t settle.

  So when the army set up a stand next week,

  right there in the Mall

  between the doughnuts and the Disney shop,

  Hads kept eyeing it, couldn’t stop, catching it every time

  the sliding doors opened and shut.

  He picked up a brochure on his break.

  Read it at home in his bed.

  Went back the next day and signed.

  Twenty-two years, life on the line.

  Taff had already done the same.

  So when we left that day,

  with snow pitchen on the Severn,

  and fishermen blowing on their gloves,

  catching the train from out by my mum’s,

  all three of us were on our way

  to become riflemen.

  Sharpe’s regiment. Attached, back then,

  to 30 Commando.

  Three boys off to Catterick.

  A suitcase each, a couple of cans.

  Off to war, like boys always have.

  Boarding a train, leaving home,

  off to Catterick, to reap what I’d sown.

  2 HADS’ STORY

  The sound of boots on the ground, walking slowly

  HADS

  We called it Afghan roulette.

  Every day, more or less.

  Going out on the ground

  to take our chances

  with what was under it.

  Low metal content. Infra-red switches. Trip wires.

  Filled with nails, ball-bearings, human shit.

  Or old Russian stuff. Anti-tank, pressure-plates.

  Or just some bloke on a phone pressing ‘dial’.

  Any of it enough

  to turn you or your mates

  into dust.

  It was me who was meant to stop all that.

  Up front, slow-sweeping my Vallon left and right.

  Listening for the tone

  that would stop me in my tracks,

  send up my hand to freeze the patrol at my back.

  After Catterick I wanted to be a medic.

  And after we deployed too,

  I kept applying for the course.

  But they reckoned I was good at this stuff,

  so they kept me at it.

  Eighteen, and the lives of the patrol depending on me.

  I had dreams.

  Missing a massive IED, turning round too late

  to see them eaten up by the earth – Arthur, Taff,

  the whole section, my mates.

  Gone in the blink of a boom,

  a cloud of grey ash.

  ARTHUR

  But you didn’t, did you, Hads?

  Never missed a thing. At least, not till …

  They were right. You were good. Had some kind of sense.

  You could smell when something was up.

  When the atmospherics changed –

  locals leaving, birds flying from a tree.

  I don’t know how you did it, but believe me,

  an ant could have farted

  and I swear you’d have caught it.

  Only wish I’d been as sharp

  that night in the Thekla, back at the start

  when I asked you and Taff if you wanted to join me,

  when I planted the seed of that thought in your mind.

  Remember where we were? Down in the hull,

>   on the port side of the boat?

  Just inches from that Banksy, sprayed the other side.

  I saw it back on R and R.

  You know the one. The skeleton rower,

  a death’s head with a hood,

  the prow of his canoe breaking the Plimsoll line.

  That’s what was on the other side of us

  when I told you I’d joined. Right there in the docks

  where the press-ganged blokes

  had once downed their drinks

  only to find the king or queen’s coin.

  If we’d remembered that rower, would we have sensed it?

  How our journey was cursed?

  Would his empty sockets, his hands on the oars

  have made us more wise?

  Would we have known the only coins we’d be taking

  were the ones on our tongues, the ones on our eyes?

  HADS

  No.

  You’re talking bollocks, Arthur. Again.

  We wouldn’t have done nothing different

  and you know it.

  Even if we went back,

  we’d still play it the same.

  Cos it ain’t all bad, is it?

  I’ll never forget the times we had.

  I know myself now. I didn’t before.

  You were right, I had to get out.

  And I always would have,

  just happened it was you

  who showed me the door.

  No more.

  ARTHUR

  Remember when we first got there?

  The plane pitching in steep.

  I thought Taff was going to shit hisself.

  Even you was pale.

  HADS

  Yeah, right.

  ARTHUR

  You was. No shame in saying it now.

  I was too. We’d all had OPTAG, but we knew

  that was just a sniff of what we were in for.

  And then, when we came down that ramp –

  HADS

  Wham. That heat.

  ARTHUR

  Like an opened oven door.

  HADS

  Yank voices.

  ARTHUR

  Dust on your lips. The landing strip, moonlit. A smell of –

  HADS

  Afghan. That Afghan smell. Like …

  ARTHUR

  Shit. And burning. Burning shit.

  HADS

  The looks on the lads going home,

  the pats of their hands on our backs,

  Their FOB-thinned faces.

  ARTHUR

  The beards, the moustaches.

  HADS

  Yeah, well all’ey, all of them.

  Heading for their two days in Cyprus.

  ARTHUR

  To get pissed, naked, into fights.

  HADS

  Out of the system before they meet the wife.

  ARTHUR

  The kids.

  HADS

  It’s the size of Reading you know? Bastion.

  ARTHUR

  Yeah, and about as shit too.

  HADS

  Nah. Bastion’s got flushing loos.

  ARTHUR

  And a Pizza Hut, that bar, ‘Heroes’,

  showing the games. Air-con gyms.

  HADS

  More ISO containers than down the dock.

  ARTHUR

  Bottling plant, vehicle pits.

  HADS

  Mocked-up Afghan village.

  ARTHUR

  Rose Cottage.

  HADS

  Yeah. Rose Cottage.

  ARTHUR

  And bloody hot. Half the boys lobster

  by the end of that week.

  HADS

  Remember switching Kev’s lotion for oil?

  ARTHUR

  Poor sod, couldn’t work out why he was grilling like that.

  HADS

  Lost his hands, didn’t he?

  On patrol from Jackson.

  ARTHUR

  Yeah. Both off at the wrist.

  Now you see them, now you don’t.

  What kind of fucking joke is that?

  HADS

  One I’m still telling, mate.

  ARTHUR

  Shit, sorry, Hads.

  OPERATION AFGHAN

  Man down! Man down!

  ARTHUR

  Hads presses pause on the game,

  pulls his chair closer to the sofa

  and, in one smooth move I’ll never get used to,

  swings himself up and into the seat,

  flicks the brake

  and wheels to the bathroom.

  Let’s give the man some dignity, no need to follow him there.

  He does it on his own now, but it’s still far from pretty.

  Twenty-one, and emptying a bag like he’s ninety.

  I only see it now, after it all,

  but Hads was shaped by war.

  I mean even before I cornered him and Taff.

  His old man for a start,

  came here from the trouble in Somalia,

  saw his own father shot, there on the spot, so wanted out.

  Settled in Bristol, met Hads’ mum,

  got hitched, moved into a house in Shirehampton,

  one of those built after World War Two,

  only meant to last a few years, but still there, standing.

  So yeah, the Blitz made Hads’ home, and his home made him.

  Cos if you’re a kid from the Shire

  you got roads all over the place –

  Outside your door, through your garden,

  a motorway over your roof. But the ones in front of you?

  They’re narrow and few.

  And now look at him, wheeling back from the lav –

  what war started with his granddad

  it’s carried on with Hads,

  cutting him down from six foot two to four foot three.

  Rifleman Hayden Gullet, twenty-one, double amputee.

  HADS

  I still feel them sometimes.

  I’ll wake and my ankle’ll be itching,

  Or I’ll need to scrunch my toes. It’s frustrating,

  cos I can’t do nothing can I? Just got to griz it out.

  But yeah, my brain still thinks they’re there.

  ARTHUR

  I was there when it happened.

  Routine patrol, showing the locals and Terry Taliban

  we could still own the ground, take control.

  Hads was up front, like he always was,

  sweeping his Vallon like a metronome,

  low and slow, reading the unseen earth.

  And all of us behind him, trying to follow his route,

  off the path, across a field.

  Two kids just metres away, gathering crops,

  and us in full kit; ospreys, packs, helmet and gats,

  going firm at the slightest of sounds. It was hot, tense.

  Just three hours from the gate,

  and I’d already drained my CamelBak.

  The ICOM chatter was high, so we were taking it steady.

  Hads wasn’t happy, so he changed the route again.

  The Corp didn’t question him, he knew he’d saved us before.

  For three months now he’d always brought us home.

  But we were jumpy. The Sarge told him to hurry.

  The whole patrol was out in the open, in the kill zone.

  HADS

  I could feel it there, somewhere. Close.

  There was a bridge up ahead.

  I’d already seen two locals

  take the long way to reach it,

  avoid the patch we were in.

  I was looking for a sign –

  some crossed sticks, a pile of stones.

  That would be there too, somewhere.

  I swung the Vallon again.

  Left, right. Left, right.

  But nothing, just the midday sun

  burning my neck, the boys going firm,

  dotting the fiel
d,

  the terp in the FOB, relaying the comm.

  Then –

  ARTHUR

  The tree line opened up.

  Muzzle flashes in the bushes,

  the whine and whizz of Afghan wasps

  as the rounds came in and our boys hit their buckles,

  flat to the ground, faces in the dirt,

  doing what they could so’s not to get hurt.

  HADS

  I knew we had to get out, find cover.

  I’d seen an irrigation ditch, fifty metres ahead,

  if I could find a safe route over –

  The boss ordered suppressing fire,

  and as the boys laid down a volley of lead

  I took a step back.

  ARTHUR

  I saw it go up.

  A sudden tree of earth and smoke,

  the ground dropping and rising,

  like a heartbeat under the soil.

  It threw Hads twenty metres at least.

  I can still see him now, as clear as then.

  Arching in the air, his arms flung wide,

  as if he was back at school again,

  high-jumping for top spot – a record-beating Fosbury flop

  that left his legs behind.

  The sounds of a hospital

  HADS’ MOTHER

  At first, when they pulled back the curtain

  I felt relief.

  A wave of warm joy.

  There’d been a mistake, a crossing of wires.

  This wasn’t my boy.

  How could it be? There’d been a wrong call.

  Whoever he was, he didn’t look like Hayden at all.

  Poor sod didn’t have his face.

  And yes, I did think of his poor mother too,

  the woman who’d have to take my place.