I took off my glasses and got into bed. But then I realised there was one last thing I wanted to do before going to sleep. I put my glasses back on and got back out of bed. I walked down to the far end of the barracks. Most of the squad was already asleep, one or two of them snoring. Someone, I couldn’t tell who, was reading under the blankets with the help of a penlight. The moon had risen by now and some sharp light was coming in the narrow high windows. I stopped at the last cubicle beside the washroom. I looked down and saw what I was looking for: caramel-coloured skin and short waved hair and a button nose peering over the thickly stacked blankets. I thought I had got away with it, but just as I turned, I saw that Hifa’s eyes were open, looking narrowly at me, glinting and amused. But I had got what I wanted.
Hifa was a woman. I went back to bed, and that was my first day on the Wall.
5
On the Wall, one day is every day. At least, it is in terms of the big-picture items such as the shape of the twenty-four hours, your duties, where you go and what you do and who you do it with. Lots of variation within that, but the architecture of the days is the same. That’s the way you want it to be, too, because on the Wall, any news is bad news. They’re never going to say, guess what, the Others have stopped coming and you can leave the Wall now. Guess what, we’ve decided we like your face and you don’t have to do two years on the Wall, in fact you can leave tomorrow, in fact, wait, why not, you can leave right this minute! Off you go! Wait, you forgot your cookies!
That’s not going to happen. The only things that can happen are bad things. So you want nothing to happen. Except it’s more complicated than that. Somewhere in the dark cave-mind there’s a gremlin, saying, But wouldn’t it be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if you had to fight for your life, if you had to do that thing you dread and train for, have nightmares about but maybe just are a tiny bit curious about too, and you have to kill or be killed? Wouldn’t it be better to do that, to feel something other than cold and hunger and boredom and fatigue? Wouldn’t it be exciting to use that bayonet you clamp on your gun every morning? You’ll get to find out something about yourself, what you are like when the worst happens. Whether you are still you.
Only the louder and stupider Defenders will ever talk about this, but we all think about it. We half-fantasise about the worst that could happen.
Mostly, though, what happens is nothing, and mostly, that’s the way we like it. My first two weeks on the Wall were like that. Every day was the same as the first day, with the main variable being the weather. Most days were about as cold as the first. Two were warmer – not warm enough to be warm but warm enough to go out with one layer less. One day was type 2 cold, dangerously cold, frighteningly cold, but the weather forecasters had told us it was coming and we were prepared. The really lethal cold is the kind that comes on when you aren’t expecting it.
I saw the same people every day, the members of my squad. I walked out to the wall with Shoona and Hifa and we had lunch together. The nickname Chewy, I am sorry to say, stuck. Yos and the Sergeant took turns pointing out things I was doing wrong, things I could do differently, things to watch out for. I realised that this was ongoing training, and though I didn’t like being found fault with all the time, I could see why they were doing it. Shoona began to tease me and Hifa about being an item, singing ‘Hifa and Chewy sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.’ There was nothing personal about the teasing, it was almost pro forma: if a male Defender and a female Defender were in any way friendly to each other, if they were anything other than fridge-temperature indifferent, they could expect to be accused of being ‘at it’. In this case, though, Shoona was on to something, because I was starting to have thoughts about Hifa. Even though I had never seen her in anything other than multiple layers of baggy clothing. Actually, maybe that was part of what was getting my attention – looking at all those shapeless clothes, it was hard not to wonder about the shape underneath them … formlessness which you know isn’t really formlessness, which you know for sure has a definite shape, an unmistakable glow … and also, it is a conclusive human truth that the only thing which makes the time pass better than daydreaming about food is daydreaming about sex. So, yes, Hifa and Chewy, but not necessarily sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
One day the Sergeant properly yelled at me, when he made an impromptu inspection and found that I didn’t have my spare ammunition rigged correctly. He was right: there was a particular manner in which we were supposed to do it, magazines folded back over each other in a set sequence, which made it quicker to load the ammo in combat, but it was laborious and boring to do, and so I sometimes skipped it.
There was nothing particularly unusual about being shouted at, so that wasn’t the main point of interest. The thing which made me focus was what Sarge said when he’d calmed down a little.
‘You’re lucky it was me,’ he said. ‘The Captain sees that, you get extra days on the Wall. That thing you did right there, that’s an extra two weeks on the watch. You want that?’
It didn’t seem to be a rhetorical question. I had to admit that no, I did not want that.
‘I didn’t think so,’ said Sarge. ‘Most people, their bark is worse than their bite. For pretty much everybody, that’s true. Their bark is their bite. Yelling or bollocking or calling you names is the worst they’ll ever do. Not him. His bite is worse than his bark. You don’t have to worry about him giving you a bollocking. You have to worry about him doing you real damage. Bite, not bark. Do you get it?’
I said that I thought I did. That didn’t seem good enough, and Sarge came closer, confidentially close, as if we were in a crowded pub and he was whispering a secret, not as if we were on the Wall, in the middle of nowhere, two hundred metres from the nearest human ears.
‘I’ll tell you something about the Captain. It’s not a secret, but it’s something he prefers to tell people for himself. When he does tell you, do me a favour and act like it’s a surprise.’ He looked around, as if he was worried about eavesdroppers, and he lowered his voice so that I could barely hear him over the wind. ‘The Captain was an Other. He got here ten years ago, before the laws changed. That’s why he’s so hardcore. That’s why he’s so strict. He knows what it’s like out there. He knows he’s not going back. He’s done four turns on the Wall because he’s obsessed with keeping them out and proving he is worth being allowed to stay.’ He let it sink in then hissed: ‘The Captain was an Other!’
It was one of those things you’re told which make no sense and at the same time you immediately know, right down in your cells, are true. The Captain was an Other! Of course he was. Until about ten years ago, Others who showed they had valuable skills could stay, at the cost of exchanging places with the Defenders who had failed to keep them out. The law was changed because this fact became known to Others and started to act as a ‘pull factor’, a reason they came here. Now, today, Others who get over the Wall have to choose between being euthanised, becoming Help or being put back to sea. There’s no escape and no alternative, now that everybody in the country has a chip: without one, you’d last about ten minutes. So even if they get over the Wall and then get away, they’re always caught and offered the standard choice. Almost all of them choose to be Help. The attraction is that if they have children, the children are raised as citizens. That’s after being taken away from their parents, of course. Others tend to be Breeders. You see the kids all around the place, often with older parents, or parents who are a visibly different ethnicity from their children. The Captain must have been one of the last to get through before the new laws. No wonder he was a fanatic. No wonder his bite was worse than his bark. His scars were tribal scars, and yet he had left behind his tribe and was now a Defender, one of us.
‘I get it,’ I said to Sarge. ‘I get it.’ I refolded the magazines of ammunition, the way I had been taught to do it, while he watched. The Captain used to be an Other … of course, of course, it made complete sense. There was something abnormal about h
is implacability. It was easier to understand once you started to think about the things he must have seen, the things he must have done. That day was the last time I cheated or took a short cut or cut a corner or did anything not one hundred per cent by the book. I became Mr Rules. I realised that even though I was on the Wall, a part of me had been assuming there were still small human margins here and there, room for interpretation, space for forgiveness or acceptance or, less nobly, the chance to talk yourself out of any trouble you might have got yourself into. I now saw that that was wrong. No leeway, no space, nothing but black and white, the rulebook or anarchy, nothing but the Wall and the Others and the always waiting, always expectant, entirely unforgiving sea.
6
After that first two-week shift on the Wall I went home. The trip was the reverse of the one I’d made to the Wall: lorry, train, second train, bus, walk. It might sound similar but it couldn’t have been more different, and the main difference was that the whole company was travelling back with me. A company of thirty-plus, heading off together after two weeks of what amounted to hard labour and semi-incarceration. We were a little, I think the word would be, rowdy. No alcohol is allowed on the Wall, a strict rule strictly enforced: if you’re caught you and anyone else involved, or thought to be involved, automatically get extra days to serve. Somehow, though, as soon as we were on the lorry, two-litre bottles of spirits magically appeared. We passed them around, swigging happily, and again I felt the pure joy you sometimes got on the Wall, the joy of relief, when something horrible is over. One of life’s great pleasures, deeply loved by all Defenders: the moment when you get to say: I hated that, but now it’s finished.
This was the first chance I got to interact with the other shift. A strange thing: we were all in the same place at the same time, doing the same thing, but we hardly ever had anything to do with each other, apart from those few fumbling moments of handover at either end of a watch. That could make you hate each other, because your emotions, at that moment, couldn’t possibly be more out of sync: starting a shift meant depressed, resentful, apprehensive, bitterly doing the worst thing in your life; finishing one meant euphoric, ecstatic, relieved, skipping off to the best bit of the day. Going off shift, you felt no ill-will to your doppelgänger, but that wasn’t true in reverse, because he hated you. In twelve hours it would be the other way around. Nothing personal: when you came on shift, you always hated the person you were relieving. The fact that you knew the other set of emotions so completely, that you knew exactly what the other person was feeling, made it worse. Your shift twin was a person you met twice a day, about whom you had very strong views, whom you didn’t really know.
After the lorry, we got on a train, a civilian train, which ran from the nearest town up to the capital. I felt sorry for the other passengers: we were loud, we were rude, we didn’t care what anyone else thought or what they needed – this was our train. People were used to that kind of behaviour from Defenders, and tended to give us a lot of space. (Good idea.) When we piled into our carriage, a Breeder with a small child at the far end picked up her child and her bags and moved elsewhere. (Also good idea.) It was warm, indeed verging on overheated, after the two weeks I’d spent on the Wall. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be hot; it was nice for the first couple of minutes, and then I could feel myself starting to sweat. We all took off multiple layers of clothing. There was yet more booze – someone had taken the chance to pick up another couple of bottles at the station. We got stuck into the drinking. The train set off. Some of the company were singing. Shoona and Cooper, after two drinks, were sitting holding hands and occasionally, when they thought nobody was looking, kissing. You could see that they liked each other more than either let on. I had found myself, not by chance, a seat next to Hifa at the end of the carriage. Hifa minus ten layers of clothing was lithe, skinny, tough and frail at the same time. Her black hair stuck out in all directions. It was only about the third time I’d seen her without a beanie or cap. We were sitting there talking about nothing much, when a man, a Defender, came and dumped himself in the seat across from us and held out a bottle of vodka. I took it, nodded thanks, took a swig, handed it to Hifa, who took a swig and handed it back to the man. All through this he kept looking at me. Then I got it.
‘You’re him!’
He laughed. A hot waft of alcohol came across the train table. It was indeed him, my shift twin. It was no surprise I didn’t recognise him, since he was another Defender I’d never seen out of his Wall clothes, swaddled in layers of cold-weather protection, wearing a beanie with a hood pulled down over it. Take four sets of outerwear off him, and he was a slim dark-haired man with brown eyes and a four-day beard. My age. That was to be expected, most Defenders were.
‘Hughes,’ he said.
‘Kavanagh,’ I said.
‘Chewy,’ he said.
‘I don’t love it, but I suppose so.’
‘You’re skinnier than I thought, Chewy.’
‘Same. It’s the—’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘How long?’
‘Fifty-eight weeks.’
In the middle. Hughes didn’t ask how long I’d been on the Wall. He didn’t need to because he knew first-hand. He started to get up.
‘So, see you at training week. Just wanted to say hello.’
‘Thanks. Yes.’
He stood by our seats for a moment and raised the bottle in a toast.
‘Well, if you are going to Breed, you could both do worse.’
In unison, Hifa and I said: ‘Fuck off.’
He laughed and headed off down the carriage towards the sing-along, him and the train both swinging and swaying from side to side. The company had run through the repertoire of old pop songs, switched to obscene favourites (which had emptied the carriage of the few remaining civilians – we now had it entirely to ourselves), and then started singing the all-time Defender classic, melancholy and defiant and nihilistic all at once, not so much a song as a chant or dirge:
We’re on the Wall because
We’re on the Wall because
We’re on the Wall because
We’re on the Wall because [stamp three times, pause for three beats]
We’re on the Wall …
and so on. The effect was hypnotic, self-transcending; you never felt less of an individual, more of a group, than when you were singing that song/chanting that chant/dirging that dirge. There was no sign that the song was going to stop, so Hifa and I, a few seats from the rest of the company, joined in. I can’t sing, not even slightly, but with that particular song it doesn’t matter. Hifa’s singing voice was unexpectedly high and delicate. We’re on the Wall because We’re on the Wall, because …
Night had settled, and the train windows were now half-opaque, so you could choose whether to look out the window into the dark landscape outside, or keep your focus on the reflection back into the train carriage. I’ve always liked that trick of perspective and perception. I alternated between the reflection and the view through the window. Moon, cows, trees, a river; my own face with Hifa behind me, the battered train fittings, the other Defenders, singing and swigging. The view beyond or the view within, the landscape or the reflection, inside or outside. The cold out there, the warmth in here.
At London, we split up, after a certain amount of hugging and joshing, and carrying each other off the train, and throwing up. The company dispersed to take a variety of different trains to our various parts of the country. For me it was a short hop across town on the underground and then a two-hour stopping train to the Midlands. This time I was the only Defender, and instead of running away to other compartments, people snuck looks at me, until I looked back at them, and then they acted as if they’d been caught doing something they knew they shouldn’t. Then it was a wait for the local bus, last one of the evening, then the bus, then a walk from the terminus, a mile or so but feeling longer with my rucksack and my emotions about home both bearing down on me. My parents had left the po
rch light on, so I could spot our house from a long way off, the only semi in our street which was still illuminated on the outside. They’d be waiting up. I squared my shoulders and knocked on the door.
Home: it didn’t just seem as if home was a long way away, or a long time ago, it actually felt as if the whole concept of home was strange, a thing you used to believe in, an ideology you’d once been passionate about but had now abandoned. Home: the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Somebody had said that. But once you had spent time on the Wall, you stop believing in the idea that anybody, ever, has no choice but to take you in. Nobody has to take you in. They can choose to, or not.
7
None of us can talk to our parents. By ‘us’ I mean my generation, people born after the Change. You know that thing where you break up with someone and say, It’s not you, it’s me? This is the opposite. It’s not us, it’s them. Everyone knows what the problem is. The diagnosis isn’t hard – the diagnosis isn’t even controversial. It’s guilt: mass guilt, generational guilt. The olds feel they irretrievably fucked up the world, then allowed us to be born into it. You know what? It’s true. That’s exactly what they did. They know it, we know it. Everybody knows it.
To make things worse, the olds didn’t do time on the Wall, because there was no Wall, because there had been no Change so the Wall wasn’t needed. This means that the single most important and formative experience in the lives of my generation – the big thing we all have in common – is something about which they have exactly no clue. The life advice, the knowing-better, the back-in-our-day wisdom which, according to books and films, was a big part of the whole deal between parents and children, just doesn’t work. Want to put me straight about what I’m doing wrong in my life, Grandad? No thanks. Why don’t you travel back in time and unfuckup the world and then travel back here and maybe then we can talk.
The Wall Page 4