Sandman

by Anna Legat

  ‘We were storming Mount Langdon. In the night. Very poor visibility, just like now. The mountain was heavily defended. The Argentines lay down constant fire. Relentless. There was this bunker in a cave – there was no way of getting to it head-on, no way of leaving it behind. There was a hail of machine gun fire streaming out of it. We had to take it to move on, or it would have our arses, one by one. Your granddad, and another man, Corporal Walsh... they were given orders to take the bunker and disarm the gunner. Your granddad led the mission. We could only provide cover for a while, then the two of them were on their own. Your granddad went in first, with his bayonet fixed onto his rifle. He stabbed in the dark... He must’ve thought he got the bastard, but... the gunner was still alive, his finger on the trigger. He pressed it just as your grandfather sunk his bayonet into his chest. He made it possible for us to take the mountain. He died a hero’s death, your granddad: Sergeant Richard Butler...’ Oscar marvels how his worst nightmare can be retold so calmly and so logically. And in so few words. Quickly. Only the nightmare lasts for eternity.

  ‘Nan said I could have his Military Cross when I’m eighteen!’

  ‘That’s only eight years from now.’

  ‘I’ll get my own, too, to add to it, you know?’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’m gonna be a soldier. With the Parachute Regiment, like you and Granddad!’

  ‘Does your grandmother know?’

  ‘No. And don’t tell her either. You know how she is,’ Tommy winks at Oscar as if it is a joke, ‘she’ll only say no. But I’ll still do it, you know?’

  ‘I’m guessing you will. I’d do the same if I were you.’

  ‘I knew you’d understand... Did you always want to be a para?’

  ‘Whoa!’ Oscar yells in reply. He has a catch. A small, imperceptible jerk of the hook is followed by another one. Oscar releases some of the tying rod and then pulls and locks it in. It’s a big one: heavy and determined to break away free. It stands no chance.

  Tommy carries the catch in the bait bucket. It’s heavy – what with all the water, not to mention the massive trout – but Tommy doesn’t mind; he soldiers on. The bucket bumps against his thigh; water sprays out. ‘Gran loves rainbow trout!’ Tommy says as they finally reach the station and find two seats to rest while waiting for their train to arrive: the eight-o-five to Temple Meads, via Bath. ‘You must tell her we caught it. She won’t believe me. She’ll think we bought it in a shop.’

  ‘I’ll tell her, don’t you worry! My fisherman’s reputation is at stake here,’ Oscar is laughing. Maybe Katie will ask him to stay for a late supper: grilled trout. He would love that. They could sit at the table, the three of them, like a family. Oscar wants nothing more.

  ‘How long till the train comes?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes.’

  Tommy’s teeth are chattering and his lips are slightly purple. Oscar realises the boy is cold. And hungry. ‘Wait here. I’ll get you some hot chocolate and something to eat.’ A small café at the station sells hot chocolate and coffee from a vending machine. They also have some pre-packed cakes. Oscar buys two hot chocolates and two flapjacks, and carries them to the waiting room where Tommy is guarding their catch.

  ‘Here, drink while it’s hot. I don’t want you to catch your death,’ Oscar tells the boy. ‘Your nan would never forgive me if that happened on my watch!’

  Sexton’s train station is an old Victorian building with all the trimmings and inconveniences of the yesteryear: it is small and draughty, with stone-tiled floors polished to shiny perfection due to over a century of busy foot traffic, and with uncomfortable hardwood benches. It is pretty, though: it has a clock tower, an intricate lace of railings and balustrades, and a flyover pedestrian bridge leading to the platforms.

  Gillian has offered to drive the boys to the station, and then to pick them up again later, at ten past midnight when they return – drunk and disorderly – from their stag night. She has four of them in her car: Charlie, sitting next to her, looking so prim and proper that you would be excused for thinking he is the blushing bride, not the raucous stag. The other three, Sasha’s Rhys and their two best men, Joe and Adrian, are in the back seat, cracking half-indecent jokes, burning with excitement. It is the thinly veiled prospect of a thinly veiled stripper that has got their pulses racing. Frequent references to the lady’s big blue eyes accompanied by their twitchy-finger gesticulation confirm Gillian’s suspicions. Charlie is doing his best to divert her attention away from Joe and Adrian, and their lewd innuendoes. Entertaining Gillian with conversation isn’t easy though, he is soon reminded. She isn’t one for casual chit-chat. Her eyes keep darting to the back seat and the lady’s big blue eyes. She catches Rhys’s eyes in the rear view mirror. He smiles sheepishly, embarrassed that Gillian, at her age, has to reckon with the excesses of the boys’ unbridled depravity. She smiles back – grins, in fact; she’d laugh at their ribald humour if that was appropriate. Which it isn’t. After all, she is the bride’s mother, one of these boys’ mother-in-law to be. Poor Charlie! What is he getting himself into!

  ‘Thanks for chauffeuring us around,’ he insists on distracting her.

  ‘No problem. At least I can do something useful, and keep an eye on you, like I promised Tara.’ She says it, her face straight as an arrow. Charlie gives her a missive of a troubled look. She laughs, ‘Of course I didn’t. Just trying to make up for lost time – you know, make friends with my daughter’s future husband.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he nods with understanding. He must’ve forgiven her for the stand-off in their early relations.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  Joe bursts out in a thunder of laughter. Gillian has the disturbing impression he’s laughing at her and Charlie. She is wrong, of course. Joe slams poor Rhys on the back and says, ‘It’ll stay between us, scout’s honour, you dirty bastard!’

  Gillian wishes she could hear what has made Joe laugh. She has missed it, bummer!

  The parking area in front of the station is small and crowded with London commuters’ cars. They’ll be coming on the train the boys are taking on their onward journey to Bath. They’ll be coming on that train, getting into their cars and driving themselves to their homes in the picture-perfect villages in Sexton’s immediate vicinity. But by the time they vacate the parking slots, Gillian will be gone too. She needs a parking space now. She finds a Disabled space and takes it with a guilty crunch in her stomach. ‘Right, I can’t stay here long,’ she mutters, directing the stags to hit the road.

  They are climbing out of the car, thanking her politely and waving to Corky who is squashed behind the back seat. Gillian is planning to take him for a walk on The Green while she is at this end of town. The Green, with its gravelled paths, is the only dry bit of land left in Sexton’s where a dog can have a runabout without drowning in mud. The rain of the last few days has been unrelenting.

  Charlie pats Corky on the head, ‘Be good, man,’ he tells the dog. Gillian wonders what the hell he’s thinking. Corky is probably wondering the same thing.

  ‘Thanks again, Gillian.’

  ‘No worries. I’ll be waiting somewhere here at quarter past twelve, yeah?’

  ‘Thanks!’ He shuts the door, catching the buckle of the passenger seatbelt in it. That makes a grating noise. Apologetically, Charlie opens the door and pushes the seatbelt inside. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbles and scuttles to join Rhys and the other two as they swagger into the station building like a gang of rowdy bandits, hollering and laughing. Gillian winds down the windows to clear the air and let out the alcohol fumes. The boys have had a few drinks for the road and the car stinks to high heaven.

  Three other men follow Charlie and his pack into the station. Two of them are young and agile, the third one is older; he has a nasty limp.

  Brothers in arms, Ahmed muses – they are brothers in arms: Sandman, Malik and Ahmed, and the bond between them is stronger than blood, stronger than love. Yet they don’t know each other, not really. Ahmed
and Malik share a flat. They only met for the first time when they came to Bath to study. Before that, they were strangers. Sandman is even more of a mystery. They don’t even know his real name. They don’t know where he was born, where his homeland is. They know nothing about him and he knows nothing about them, and yet there is a bond between them. They share a mission, each for his own reasons, but the mission is the same, as is the object of their hatred. Paying back in kind: hatred for hatred. At least, that’s what Ahmed tells himself so there is order and reason in his mind and a purpose to his actions. He is a rational man; things must make sense. What he is about to do must make sense. Payment in kind to restore balance. Natural justice. Revenge. Justified force. Necessity... There is a word out there for how he feels. There is a word for everything in this clever world of ours. Ahmed must find it. All sorts of words fly off Malik’s tongue, and he believes in them. Ahmed does too, as he now has faith in something that is greater than him, but he hasn’t found a word yet that fits him personally. Maybe there isn’t such a word. Maybe no word can express it... The bond. The mission. Natural justice. Revenge. Necessity. Sandman...

  There is no individual person behind Sandman, no frail, weak humanity. All there is to him is a purpose. In the few days that he stayed with them at their flat in Bath, Ahmed has learned nothing about the man. He doubts Sandman himself remembers any of his past or knows who he is. He is a phantom. But, bizarrely, Ahmed trusts him with his life – with what is left of it, that is. Sandman won’t retreat. He won’t change his mind. He won’t abandon their mission until it is done.

  They drove to Sexton’s Canning in a car which they left in the centre of town, parked on a double yellow line, booby-trapped. It was Sandman’s idea. They won’t need that car anymore. It is full of their DNA. He, for one, does not wish to be traced. He is Sandman – he leaves no traces behind. Ahmed and Malik agree. Malik is keen for maximum damage to be done. Ahmed doesn’t want his mother to know it was him. She wouldn’t understand. She would cry and blame herself, and all those bastards would let her take the blame.

  What blame? Ahmed asks himself. There is no blame, only glory. He must believe that. Justify that in his mind.

  ‘We’re like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ he says.

  Malik laughs. ‘Yeah! It was a damn good film!’

  Sandman looks at them without comprehension. His hooded eyes don’t so much as blink. Of course, he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. He hasn’t seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. ‘It’s about two men, outlaws. They go down in style, their guns blazing,’ Ahmed explains to Sandman.

  ‘Outlaws?’ Sandman asks.

  ‘Like... criminals – thieves – from the Wild West.’

  ‘Thieves get their hands cut off, where I come from. It’s not good to steal, no good.’

  They approach the station. A bunch of young men, loud-mouthed and drunk, are entering the building. There are four of them: disorderly and bawdy. ‘Catch up with them,’ Sandman instructs Ahmed and Malik. ‘It will look like we’re with them. Less suspicious.’

  Sandman is a cunning fox.

  They attach themselves to the group. As it happens, apart from Sandman, they’re all the same age. They look like they’re mates. They queue up for the tickets. Ahmed finds it amusing that he and Malik are buying tickets for the train they’re going to blow up. Ironic. He smirks at the thought. A young boy, ten, maybe eleven, is staring at him. Ahmed winks and the boy smiles. He is there with his grandfather, a bait bucket and a set of fishing rods popped against a bench next to him. Sandman is also looking at the pair. His face is like a carved stone, his eyes expressionless. Ahmed stops smirking. He wishes the boy and his granddad were waiting for a different train. Or perhaps they’re just picking someone up. Ahmed tells himself that is the case.

  The arrival of the eight-o-five to Bristol Temple Meads, via Bath, on platform two is announced through the loud speaker. That’s their train. The group of loud young men head for the platform, as does the boy and his grandfather. The boy grabs the bucket and leans against its weight as he carries it through the door. The grandfather follows, laden with fishing rods.

  ‘Do you think the fish is gonna be alive when we get home?’ the boy asks his grandfather.

  ‘Oh yeah, definitely.’

  ‘Maybe we can let it swim for a while in the bathtub... Do you think Nan would let me keep it?’

  ‘What? As a pet?’ The old man laughs.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We can always ask her when get there, but I’ve a feeling -’

  ‘Leave it to me. I’ll ask her nicely.’

  The train rolls into the station, and they all board it. Ahmed, Malik and Sandman find seats in the same carriage as the boy and his grandfather. The drunken young men are restless. A typical stag outing. They take their seats, and then, just as the train jerks into motion, they decide to get up and relocate to the front. The front of the train is a bad idea, Ahmed assesses their chances. But then again, no one on this train is really safe. With the amount of explosives Ahmed carries in his backpack, they’re all doomed.

  XX

  The foul-mouthed young men move on, leaving the carriage peaceful and quiet. Since they entered the station, Oscar has found their behaviour overbearing and quite intolerable – a shock to the system after the soothing silence of the lake. He has tensed up inside, bracing himself for an unpleasant journey home. He is relieved they’ve gone to make a nuisance of themselves somewhere else. The youth these days – they have nothing to focus on, that’s their problem.

  Oscar is surprised however that they have left behind the other two. He was under the impression that they were all together, but now he is not so sure. The other two young men resolutely remain in this carriage, sitting arm in arm, with another – older – man keeping them company. Oscar thought the old man was travelling on his own, but he was obviously wrong. These three are together. He wonders what makes him think that. They have nothing in common; they aren’t even talking to each other. They just sit there, the old man stone-faced, the two young ones agitated. One of the them keeps checking his watch, over and over again. The other one is playing with his fingers – bending them one by one, then tapping them on his knees, looking nervously around. At some point he catches Oscar’s eye, and both he and Oscar look away. But Oscar keeps watching from the corner of his eye. His old soldier’s instinct tells him something is not right. These three men sitting together are not right. Especially the older one. His clothes. He is wearing normal clothes, nothing out of the ordinary, except – Oscar notes – his clothes are brand new. There is a label sticking out from his rolled-up sleeve. His jeans are too big, held up by a belt. His jacket is a couple of sizes too large as well. It is as if someone has bought these garments for him without knowing his height and build. The style of the clothes – something is not right with that, either. Oscar can’t put his finger on it, but it isn’t right for that man. He looks uncomfortable in his oversized trousers and padded gilet with a furred hood. Something else is wrong. It is this one thing that makes these three men belong together even though they purport not to know each other. They have exactly the same backpacks: camouflage green canvas, the same make, the same style and size. They keep their bags on the floor, between their legs. Identical bags. A coincidence? Oscar doesn’t believe in coincidences.

  ‘What’s wrong, Oscar?’ Tommy pulls his sleeve. He speaks loudly, thus attracting the attention of other passengers, including the three men, who are now gazing in Oscar’s direction, intrigued and somewhat alarmed.

  ‘Nothing... something in my eye, I think,’ Oscar rubs his left eye. ‘Oh, there, it’s gone!’ He blinks theatrically.

  ‘I thought you were asleep. Remember, you told me, in the Paras they taught you to sleep with your eyes open. Remember?’

  Oscar mumbles something indistinctly. Damn it! Something fishy is going on! His instincts are never wrong. ‘Shall we call your grandma to tell her we’re on the way?
<
br />   Where’s your phone?’

  ‘But we just called her, remember? At the station!’ Tommy frowns.

  ‘Yes, yes... She might want to know we’re on the move now.’ Oscar wishes now that he had his mobile phone on him. Damn it! He has left it at home as he refused to be harassed by Heather. He wanted to be left alone: him and Tommy, and the wilderness. Damn it!

  As if on cue the two young men get up, pick up one of the backpacks, and leave the compartment. The old man doesn’t move. Was Oscar wrong? Were they, after all, thrown together randomly. He scans the carriage: most of the seats are taken. Perhaps that was it: the three men landed in the only available seats, and they happened to be next to each other. He breathes in relief. He doesn’t have to worry about Tommy, about putting him in some jeopardy. It’s only Oscar’s overactive imagination. He must stop sniffing danger at every corner. This isn’t the Falklands. Nothing is going to happen, for God’s sake!

  ‘ So have you decided if our catch ends up on the table or in the bathtub?’ he returns his full attention to Tommy.

  ‘Um...’

  Tommy is telling him about his plans for the fish, his face animated, excited and round-eyed, but Oscar stops listening.

  The old man has got up, too. He picks up his backpack, rather gingerly, and puts his on his back, almost in slow motion, as if it contained something fragile, like glass. He heads for the door. There isn’t a station anytime soon. The next station is Bath. Until then, the train traverses Wensbury Plains with no stops. A good twenty minutes without stopping. Where is that old man going? This is not right.

  Oscar bends over Tommy and grabs his arm. ‘Now, Tommy, listen carefully,’ he exhales into the boy’s round-eyed face, ‘Don’t ask any questions. I want you to go down between the seats and roll up into a ball. Can you do that? Cover your head. Stay on the floor. Stay that way until I come back, OK?’