‘Harry loved the bars,’ she said. ‘One of them used to put a monkey on the counter and you’d feed it nuts.’
They sat quietly watching the lights.
‘Do you want chips?’ Luke said.
She nodded.
He brought them back and they sat down on one of the white iron benches. Up on the promenade a tram was passing encased in neon and it was playing the kind of tune you used to hear on the radio. She didn’t look up and Luke could see she was all about the chips. With the colours around them and bulbs lit for miles up the coast, Luke wondered if Blackpool could be seen that night from the moon. A minute later the fireworks burst over the Irish Sea. She looked up, laughed again. Luke felt himself melting away, a snowman on the bench, sitting in for someone else. There was nothing beside her but the essence of Harry.
He breathed out. She would never know. But he’d learned from the letters that they weren’t married and that she had spent many of her holidays waiting for him. Harry Blake was married to another woman and they had three children and he lived with them in a house in Manchester. All the stories she built around him came from a hope she had, a dream she made, but it was really an affair that proved impossible. He only came to the bedsit when it suited him. It then occurred to Luke, sitting on the bench amid the lights and the smell of vinegar, that the letters had stopped when Anne was pregnant with his mother. Harry Blake, his grandfather, the great Harry, had left her in the lurch, and that was the thing she could never say.
BOSSA NOVA
Anne wanted to remain in the bar downstairs with Sheila’s family. She wanted to ask Luke if that would be all right, but instead she just smiled at the mirror and walked down the hall while he was hanging up the coats. They were about to go upstairs when Sheila emerged and took Anne’s hand and said she was having none of it. ‘We’re a long time dead, aren’t we, Mrs Blake? Come into the lounge and have a glass with the girls.’
Anne sat with a vodka and tonic. The bubbles were nice and she liked the voices of the people. Sheila’s family were all good at laughing and they sat at a round table, balloons taped to the wallpaper, while a man played an electronic keyboard. Anne said: ‘Bossa Nova.’ Then she stared at the beer mats, wondering if Harry would know where to find her. Behind the bar was a popular print of a crying boy and Anne fixed her eyes on it and felt it was a cold winter painting like ones of New York. Luke asked Sheila whether she’d mind if he went out for a couple of hours.
‘Of course, love! Away you go and enjoy yourself.’ She gave him a shove and took a gulp from her glass. ‘A young man like you should be out causing a rumpus on a night like this.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Away!’ she said. ‘I’ll make up your bed in the darkroom and you can just climb in later. Away and do your thing. You don’t have to pass the evening with blob-mouths like us! We’ll look after Mrs Blake and get her up to bed.’ He looked at Anne and actually saw her contentment, her sweet attention, float in the air of the room without quite landing anywhere.
‘It’s nice here, isn’t it?’ she said.
SPROGS
Flannigan was standing in the Washington. He’s one of those guys who knows how to be good-looking as he waits at a bar. It’s the stance, the confidence, the all-round readiness with the glad-eye and the lip. Luke stood at the door and shook his head at the whole performance. ‘Is that an AK-47 in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
‘Hey, dickwad,’ Flannigan said, going for the shoulder hug. ‘You’re even uglier than you were in the sandpit, Captain. How’s it shakin’? And I thought you only went to the classy places.’
‘I do. This is old school.’
‘It might be old school but it’s full of losers. Look at the state of that fucken disaster over there.’ He pointed into the corner of the pub where Private Dooley stood grinning by the jukebox.
‘Of all the chairborne motherfuckers in the history of the British army, if it isn’t our own Captain Campbell.’
Luke walked up to him. ‘Fuck sake, Doosh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘No. We kept it on the down low. I only emerge from the chat-room when I know the real Neanderthals are coming out. So when he told me it was Blackpool, I said “What! Awesome. This boy’s getting on the first Ryanair out of here.” So what you drinking, you lightweight?’
He ordered three pints. Three whiskies.
‘I’m insisting on Irish,’ Dooley said at the bar. ‘None of your fucken sheep-shagging Highland cheeky water tonight.’
‘Listen, dude,’ Luke said. ‘I know you live on the other side of refinement, but everybody knows Scotch whisky is unsurpassed, so suck it up, bitch.’
Flannigan laughed and nodded to Dooley. ‘Oh, we’ve missed the old brain-box, haven’t we, Doosh?’
‘Fucken A,’ Dooley said. ‘You’ve left us with the fucken horror-pigs, man. I’m talking shite hawks.’
‘The other side of refinement!’ Flannigan said. ‘You crack me up, Jimmy-Jimmy. It’s all tossers in the platoon now. We left all the education in a pool of piss in Kajaki. Fucken lady-boys giving it Super Mario on their da’s old mobile. I’m telling you. Boys about thirteen they’re sending us. Miserable as fuck at the base since you and the major fucked off to join Destiny’s Child or wherever the fuck you’ve been.’
Luke noticed Flannigan was now wearing a fancy watch, the same as Dooley. They clinked pints. ‘Get your big fat gypsy lips around that, Dooley,’ Flannigan said. Dooley drank then rolled up his sleeve and revealed a new tattoo. He said he and Flannigan and Lennox got them in Dubai on the way back and it was the most painful one he ever got. Luke leaned in and Flannigan also rolled up his sleeve. It wasn’t a very typical tattoo, but it was identical on each of them: a short ridge of mountains and a bird above the summit with extended wings, the bird showering down heavenly light and the words ‘Free Afghanistan’. Luke wondered if everything in life was about the image you were left with. Nothing might change on the ground but the movie could be made and the pics could whizz into cyberspace. The turbines at Kajaki would never leave their wrappings but these young men would carry these pictures to their graves.
‘Very nice,’ he said.
‘Here’s to it,’ Flannigan said, lifting his glass. ‘And good riddance to all the bullshit.’ They battered through several rounds, talking about the regiment and what they’d been doing since the tour. They all avoided it for a while and then the business of Scullion came up.
‘I think he was a mess going into it,’ Flannigan said. ‘Like, fucken totalled in the brain. He gave Rashid the baton and that guy was one turncoat motherfucker from the off. You could see it in his one good eye: ANA my arse, he was Terry, bitch, and riding hard for the biff, bang, pow. Remember? Remember his face all kissy to the major, but underneath, man, he was plotting the whole time to fuck us right up. Rashid, man: to him it was open mic night at the Hotel Taliban. It was, as well. And he threw the whole fucken section into the mosh-pit.’
‘Not just us,’ Dooley said.
‘He had them watching us for miles.’
‘The boy from the Caledonian …’
‘Miles, man.’
‘The boy he shot.’
‘Fucken radioed ahead, didn’t he, Rashid?’
‘It was a day out, man,’ Flannigan said. ‘The fucken white rovers and the heavy metal. It was a day out. You could never have known it was going to be an ambush.’
‘Stop,’ Luke said. He was still nodding after he said the word and put down his whisky. ‘It was a massive fucken error. A massive fucken error, do you hear? I knew the major wasn’t stable. And I knew I wasn’t fucken doing that well, either. And we were your superior officers. And the whole day and the whole fucken next day was bad shit from beginning to end. The boy’s dead and those kids in the orchard are fucken dead, too.’
‘Captain …’
‘We can’t fix it.’
Dooley waited a moment and then the all-nonsense v
ersion of his life kicked in and he smiled. ‘I just want to clean my gun, Captain,’ he said.
‘Good on you, Doosh.’
‘I’ll never forget it,’ Flannigan said. ‘Remember the way the major shot him through the eye?’
‘He was dead by then,’ Luke said.
Dooley spun his empty glass on the table with a finger. ‘Was it the good eye or the bad eye he shot?’
‘They were both bad,’ Flannigan said.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Luke. ‘He saw plenty we couldn’t see.’
The privates were young enough to allow every military event to embolden their spirit. That was all. To them, the captain was a defeated man, but they wouldn’t show it: they loved Jimmy-Jimmy. More than any test at home, more than any big event in their own lives, the events on the way to Kajaki would define for them what it means to have your courage measured and tested against other men. They had grown sure in their hearts that they knew more about real life. The captain was now adrift in the civvies’ lightweight world, so the night was about nostalgia, and that was fine. It was what the two soldiers had expected. ‘He’s never coming back,’ Flannigan said when Luke went off for a minute.
‘What, from the bogs?’ Dooley said.
‘No, you dickwad. To the army. He’s moved on, lad. He’s not coming back and that’s it.’
‘Wish it was me,’ Dooley said.
‘No, you don’t.’
Three pints. Three rums.
‘Christ on a bike, Jimmy-Jimmy. Rum! Have you gone and bought your sailor whites and joined the fucken Andrew?’
‘Bite my todger, Flannigan.’
‘They will, man,’ Dooley said. ‘The Andrew, the British navy. They’ll chomp off your birthday sausage and spit it into the English Channel.’ He leaned over to clink glasses again. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get debaucherous.’
‘Debauched,’ Luke said.
‘Whatever.’
They drank in silence for a moment and then Dooley stuck his hand in his pocket and produced a bag. ‘E, anyone?’
‘Shocking behaviour,’ Flannigan said. Then he poked his fingers into the bag and took out two pills. He swallowed one immediately with a mouthful of rum and the other he slid into the breast pocket of his jacket.
‘Later,’ said Luke.
THE METROPOLE
He wouldn’t have said no point blank. Easier, and less judgemental, to drink your share and subtly dodge the pills. Most of his years in uniform had been spent artificially high or falsely tranquil, states that appeared, with hindsight, to mirror the campaigns themselves. He was the old dog now and in his mind he was easing towards the door. People would say it was all part of the general disorder to have smoked pot with the privates but such people don’t know the British army.
Another few drinks, then up to the darkroom. That was his plan. He didn’t want to bail too early but he knew as he sat there that his compass was set for the off. Listening to himself banter about the army and its characters, its duties and compensations, he saw again how much he had once wished to live like a good, sensible machine. But he’d failed at that. He wanted them to know the failure was his. There was no such thing as an ordinary life. He’d learned that from Anne and he learned it from himself. You can only live a life proportionate to your nature. And he was calm. He was getting there. He could imagine a future less taken up with loss.
‘With a drink in you, Flannigan, you’re an absolute pest to all people of the female persuasion.’ Luke said it as they walked down the promenade and Dooley joined in.
‘He’s even worse on E.’
There was scarcely a group of girls on the prom that Flannigan didn’t stop and ask for a light or the way to another bar, allowing Dooley to bring up the rear with his shorter presence, ogling away. A posse of lip-glossed girls in dangerous heels told them to shut up a minute and listen. What they wanted was the Metropole Hotel, down at the end of the prom, open late, where they had a great karaoke bar and a disco.
‘Are you the shy, sexy one?’ said a girl wearing something debatably more than a bikini, tottering up to walk next to Luke, offering him the dregs of a Bacardi Breezer.
‘I’m their dad,’ Luke said.
‘Hey, slappers!’ she shouted at the group in front. ‘Wait for me and Dumbledore. We going up the Metropole?’
‘Yo, bitch,’ a girl in front shouted. ‘Get your skinny arse in gear.’
‘Is the place still open?’ Luke asked.
‘The Metropole never shuts.’
‘But isn’t it old people there?’
‘Oh, aye. Like wheelchairs. You’ll love it.’
‘And why would you want to go there?’ he asked.
‘Three answers: cheap drink, cheap drink, and cheap drink. Plus the oldies go to bed and there’s a fuck-off dance floor.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said.
‘Go for it, soldier.’
‘Are those eyelashes real?’
‘Definitely,’ she said. Luke saw the waves rolling up and flattening on the beach, reflecting the lights, the hotel. ‘You don’t seem like a squaddie,’ she said. ‘They do.’
It was foldaway tables in a smelly ballroom. It was a handful of pensioners and a compère with a microphone, a tanned man in a nylon suit that came from another era. He was Scottish and he seemed delighted that ‘the young team’ had arrived and that the girls were already dancing. Luke went to the bar and came back with a tray of drinks. The Scouser was complete. ‘All I want is a big juicy pint.’ We’re on a big night out, he thought, the music inside him, and these girls are definitely with us. ‘Give it here,’ he said, taking the pint and tanking half of it down. ‘I love beer, me,’ he said, putting down the glass and wiping his mouth. ‘I love beer and I love Blackpool and I could drink a barrel.’
‘Check him out,’ Dooley said. ‘He’s having it.’
‘I’m having it large,’ he said.
The bass was loud and it filled the room. They settled round the table and the girls came back and forth to have swigs from their bottles and to open and close their handbags and fix their make-up. Other groups of young people arrived and the wallpaper began to gleam. ‘It’s just bollocks,’ Dooley said. ‘They have a trial and these three NCOs get off.’
‘Who?’ Flannigan said.
‘The two sergeants and the corporal. Budgies.’
‘What?’ Luke said.
‘The Royal Welsh. These three guys get acquitted the other month. They were beasting a young lad and he died.’
‘It was a normal beasting,’ Flannigan said. ‘The boy was a tit. He was undergoing a reprimand.’
‘Fuck off, Flange. The guy was twenty-three.’
‘So what?’
‘So everything, you twat. The guy was twenty-three and got a bit pissed at a party in the mess. He fucked about with some office equipment and he got smashed for it. But it was too much. They marched him out the next day, it was thirty degrees Centigrade, and they beasted the kid until he had a heart attack. That is totally fucked up, man.’
‘If you don’t want a good rifting, don’t be an arsehole,’ Flannigan said.
‘This was on the news?’ Luke asked.
‘Yeah,’ Dooley said. ‘On the news. The adjutant captain told the three fucking bears, these feather-heads, the NCOs, to melt the kid out on the parade ground.’
‘Where?’
‘Lucknow Barracks.’
‘Right.’
‘It was over the top.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ Flannigan said. ‘How many times have you been trashed up and down the mudflats, Sponge Bob?’
‘Not for hours in that heat. Not when it’s boiling outside and I’m still dehydrated from the night before.’
‘Dry your eyes.’
‘No, seriously, Flange. That’s fucked. The main guy who did it was the most hated dude in the battalion. A real fucken drill-pig with a hard-on for sprogs.’
‘He wasn’t a sprog.’
‘He was twenty-three.’
‘So what, our kid? That’s old. You do shit, you get beasted. My dad told me they once beasted him from arsehole to breakfast-time just for dropping his stick. So stop fucking moaning, and bring on the rums.’
‘The kid had traces of ecstasy in his bloodstream,’ Dooley said, turning to Luke. ‘He was off his tits when they were beasting him out there. Fucken animals. And the guys who did it get off because everybody thinks they’re a bunch of hard-asses who can do what they like.’
Flannigan was looking at the girls. ‘You can’t have a military without militarism,’ he said.
Luke put his drink down. ‘And you think they deserve the Victoria Cross for that, do you, Flange?’
The two just stopped in each other’s eyes, the younger man’s pupils so large and so ready for action, engulfed by the moment. Luke paused to see just how far he would go, but Flannigan was biting his cheek and he came back with nothing. ‘The boy was about the same age as the guy we lost,’ Luke said. ‘Remember him? The kid we lost in that stupid ambush? That’s a fucken life, mate. And when you don’t do the right thing and you rub out a life you’ve lost your decency.’
‘Captain.’
‘Just saying. That shit happens: you’ve lost your decency.’
‘All right, sir.’
‘Do you get me?’
They went quiet. ‘I’m just messing,’ Flannigan said. Then after a moment one of the girls came up to the table and pulled him by the arm. He looked up at the other men with a grin, and said, ‘I’m off my face.’
‘Go and dance, Flange,’ Luke said. Flannigan saluted and was never so much himself as then. It would be a long road for him, thought Luke. He was vulnerable, his friend, a veteran of bad dreams, made for toughness, inclined to ruin. ‘Away and dance, ya big daft bastard.’
‘We’re okay, aren’t we, Captain?’
Luke smiled. ‘Of course we are. Go and enjoy yourself.’ Flannigan shrugged and turned out his hands.
‘I get better-looking every day,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow.’
Ten minutes later, Dooley was dancing so much in his seat that it seemed he could just take off. He got some water and then high-fived the captain. ‘I miss my wife,’ he said. ‘You know she’s a registered nurse, Jimmy-Jimmy?’
The Illuminations Page 22