unshaven sock-puppets who were grubbing up handfuls of peanuts
and raisins from tinfoil salvers. The Queue-man had said he could
maybe get hold of some Medjool dates, but Gawain nixed this on
the grounds of cultural insensitivity, given so many of the date
groves – along the Shatt al-Arab and here, on the banks of the
Tigris – had been … shot-to-shit. The sock-puppets coughed up
Arabic and the terps spat out English – what was there to communicate
anyway, save for infectious distrust? Gawain, picking up
from Trimmer’s briefing, spoke about provisional reconstruction
and military instruction teams, and the sterling work they’d be
doing: building schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure – training
newly recruited police and army personnel. As his words were
chewed over, then regurgitated in the form of nutty burps and
fruity throat-clearings, he wondered … who believes this bullshit
less – me or them? Thought this – and watched hands dart out to grab
thirty-three see-el bottles of water and magic them under the folds
of their … invisibility cloaks – although no boy wizards, they …
Gawain wondered at the time if this was really the essence of the
current conflict: hiding things … Hiding mineral water – hiding
heavy water, hiding Sarin gas. Had he ever believed the casus belli?
That there were fleets of mobile EnnBeeSee units cruising about out
there in the sandy sea? True, these men – Shia notables with hidden
empires of their own – were hardly likely to’ve been entrusted with
anything by the Ba’athists – nevertheless, they shared the same
shattered land, where streetlamps were sawn off at the root, then
carted off for scrap, and the way of settling a little neighbourly dispute
was to lob a few mortar rounds over on to their rooftop – much
as a Surrey householder might plant a fast-growing leylandii. Who
let the dogs out – Bush! Bush! No! Not dogs at all but wolvish Rams –
and here we are, chomping at the bit, the finest light cavalry in the
world, trained to within an inch of our sodding lives, perfectly
calibrated pieces of human materiel, upgraded regularly so’s to be
fully inter-operable with the latest computerised gun-platforms,
veritable cybernetic warriors – such as Gawain saw day in – day
out … fighting their way across the monitors of his sons’ peesees,
but reduced now – just as the army establishment overall was being
constantly, politically … shrivelled, shrunken, withered … to the
status of khaki-uniformed menials ordered to scoop up the human
poop … So here Gawain finally was, on his way to war, in profile, in
a frieze of painted men, doing everything he’s not meant to do – but
then the guidelines – and they are only guidelines – would geld the
Rams – leave them bleating, the better to reflect the quibbling of
their … idle-minded overlings. Healthy and safe, perhaps, but utterly
impotent, wandering about with thick rubber bands around their
useless bollocks, waiting for them to … drop off. Gawain was on
his way to war – the White Plastic Garden Chair War is how
it’ll go down in the annals. A commemorative decoration for the
Rams’ rampant table ornament will need to be obtained from Thos
Askew and Sons, Jewellers and Engravers of Pickering, Yorkshire,
est nineteen hundred and four, ting-ting goes the swinging door:
Difficult job, Colonel Thomas, name’s too long for a standard plaquette –
now, if it were El Alamein, that’d be another matter … Yes, that’s
how it’ll be known – and it’ll rightly be judged a conflict of a
triviality to rank alongside the Soccer War, the War of the Golden
Stool – to which, no doubt, it would be compared by the Staff
College instructors – and the Rum Rebellion. Yes, Gawain is at last
embarked on his quest – finally he’ll have the opportunity to slay
the green demon of his own envy. He’s looking pretty fucking
gleaming … if I say so myself – face bronzed, muscles more toned
than they’ve been in years, Tag Heuer sunglasses dangling around
his neck – a corded, lean neck, also encircled by a scrap of khaki
established protocols, since that’s where you’ll get a camel’s head up
your arse … but how’s a commander to earn his men’s respect if
he doesn’t … lead from the front? Gawain feels the sweat pooling
in his keks, then cooling … and cooling. Ice water courses down
his face – he’s gripped by a frozen exhilaration. The past forty
months rewind, flickering, and he’s back in the deefac on the rolling
plains south of Saskatchewan – back watching the mighty tower
slump to its knees and keel over into the dust of its own demolition.
Then – a commercial break: Coors Light, the Coldest-Tasting Beer in
the World! Then back to Armageddon: Poor little Greeny! suspended
on a tightrope between the Twin Towers – out there in the void,
all alone, cavorting – dancing in full-dress uniform, celebrating
this vertiginously millennial moment – thrilled to the core of his
masculine being as he glances to the right, to the left, and into …
the void. Five minutes approx’ to our arvee, Boss, the Trooper in the
back shouts over the grinding engine, then to the driver: Second
left! Through the dirt-filmed crescents of windscreen, Gawain sees
the grubby streets strobing past – sees bleached plastic bones …
rotting concrete organs … rusting corrugated-iron flesh – sees
this: the very compost heap of civilisation itself, where decay’s been
under way for … seven-thousand-bloody-years. It was this the Rams
were sworn to defend … with our cocks tucked up between our legs.
Which is harder, Gawain wonders, for a camel’s head to penetrate
an insufficiently armoured Land Rover, or a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven? But I’m not a rich man! His pay is adequate,
and, while certainly not enough to cut his lover’s dash … at least
what I have isn’t proffed. There were grants for the kids’ education if
the regiment was on a prolonged foreign posting – Fiona had some
money from a spinster aunt, while Rodney might … come through
eventually. But there was no long-term job security, for officers and
men alike – instead they’re bombarded with the management-speak
to be expected in any contemporary British organisation obsessed
by its own … corporate culture. The hissing quack of Trooper
Hodges’s cans is followed by: Man down, Boss – it’s Bessemer …
Bessemer! Fucking Bessemer – Bessemer, who Fiona had told him
to keep an eye on. Bessemer, whose dumb little tart thought the
thoroughly decent thing to do was to tell him the truth … and how
bloody selfish is that? Her clean conscience has led directly to this …
dirty little incident. Man down … No, boy down – child down … My
child down – the flesh-of-my-flesh … Bessemer down! The first casualty
of this … children’s crusade. And they’re my children – so how bad is
&nbs
p; that? Calling home from Camp Val is a complicated rigmarole –
card calls, strictly rationed, can be patched through the radio net,
then via an exchange at Shaibah. But some techie-minded trooper
in the int’ cell has figured out how to piggyback Skype calls on the
wonky Iraqi internet. Gawain was unaware of this until two nights
ago, when in the hot crotch of darkness he walked into the comms
Portakabin and found Tizer with his keks down round his knees,
beating his meat to the enthusiastic encouragement of an on-screen
girl – a very young girl to judge by … the tensility of her tits. Ever the
true and gentle knight, Gawain had simply muttered, Sorry … and
quietly withdrawn – now, as the Wimmik clanks over a battered
metal hoarding no longer effectively advertising Freedom Cola, he
gets the sit rep’ from Hodges he should’ve had days ago: turns
out Bessemer was up for a Midnight Express call with his Carol
late on Sunday – but instead of the silky Agent Provocateur lingerie
he’d been expecting, he was … sorely provoked: Gary was meant to
be going home in a fortnight, Boss, for the wedding … This
Gawain already knows, having signed the authorisation himself –
nevertheless, banging about in the hot crotch of the personnel carrier,
he apprehends this fact in all of its very contemporary absurdity:
Incredible! Difficult to imagine the Indian Army troops who
occupied Basra in nineteen fourteen being allocated such highly
compassionate leave – Difficult? Bloody impossible … But then,
just as the nine-millimetre Sig Sauer holstered at his hip is …
so soft – a Dalí gun, so the impotence of the entire British Army’s
deployment is confirmed by such … humanitarian considerations.
Confound their knavish tricks … Confuse their pol-i-tics … Better get
aitchqueue on the blower, Hodges, we’ll need to have Bessemer
casevaced out to the aypod asap. He turns to Ali, the ferret-faced
Basrati ’terp who did the same for the Welchers … You can trust
him. A bit, was all Trimmer had said. D’you know what the fuck’s
happened? is Gawain’s blunt enquiry – and he tries to infuse this
with great dollops of Jonathan’s savoir faire: I know that you know
that I know that you know something I’ll never fucking know – which is
HOW THINGS ACTUALLY WORK HERE! It is a difficult
situation, Colonel … the ’terp says, twisting towards him: his thin
body hangs down from his thin wrist, which is caught in a thin
hanging strap. Outside, the earth burns in its heavenly crucible,
inside the Wimmik a half-eaten packet of Starbursts waggles about
in the dash-mounted cup-holder. Ali’s smile is … thin, and from
it emerges slim pickings … Your New Zealander colleagues were
looking for these chairs, it’s true, but the man who has them is
an important Sheik – someone who gives hospitality in the Arab
way … and he has friends visiting right now … Off course there
will be upsetting … Off course. As they roar down streets empty of
every living thing besides a wonky-donkey tethered to a pile of
shit, Gawain interrogates the ’terp: Is this man linked to the Jam?
To other Iranian-backed militias? What sort of firepower might
he be able to muster? Outside, it’s pushing fifty in the shade and
those shadows are … sharp as scimitars – inside the Wimmik it’s
still hotter, and Gawain’s nadgers … are … boiling in their bag.
It’s gloomy, too, and the complexity of light and dark passing
across Ali’s ferrety face expresses all the awful ambiguity of his own
position: What’re we doing here? Our enemies’ enemies are also our …
enemies – and we have no real friends at all … This is it, Hodges says,
removing the pack of Starbursts from the cup-holder: Al-Afrika
Street … Yes, Al Afrika Street, a soap opera about ordinary Iraqis
going about their business in a typical post-conflict situation: cuppas
of mint tea, chatting about the weather – Ooh, it ain’t ‘alf ‘ot, Mum –
innanout of each other’s houses with each other’s white plastic
garden chairs … Only the central grid of Ali al-Garbi’s streets, laid
out in the seventies before the Great Patriotic War, are metalled –
out here in the ‘burbs there are no pavements, while the roadways
are dust-fields … irrigated with raw sewage. Gawain stands, sun-blinded,
blinking down at his boots, each surrounded by concentric
rings … dust-waves. He looks up and sees a poster of Muqtada
al-Sadr smilingly jollily in black turban and robe. He looks way up:
a single off-white cloud is chalked on the slate sky … wool caught on
barbed wire. Quiet! he bellows, although in this highest of noons
Al-Afrika Street is a … graveyard, and besides: If it were incoming,
I should’ve heard its discharge … Still, a la-la-la-single cloud in
an otherwise empty sky … isn’t it rich? The Kiwis’ Samil slumps
sideways in the roadway, while beside it is the Wimmik their
Force Protection must’ve arrived in. Gawain admonishes himself
to Stay grounded! but keeps peeking skywards at the anomalous
little cloud … aren’t we a pair? The Venetian-blind-slatted sides
of the aypeevee throw shadow-bars that tiger-stripe my lover’s fair
skin … Jonathan rolls away from him, up and out of the trench
their ardour has dug in the old horsehair mattress … dust-motes –
honey-light. He props his sleek weasel’s head in his hand, reaches
for the Marlboro smouldering in the ashtray on the bedside table,
takes a long, luxuriant drag, and, his lungs … popping and crackling,
exhales a long, luxuriant plume of smoke, over his sternum and
belly, igniting a burning bush! which dies down to reveal his heavy
and serpentine cock … Kaah! heavy with blood. Swelling, it pushes
out from the jungle … hakuna matata … hakuna ma– Boss! Boss!
Bosh-bosh! Fi’s brother, Steve, is bosh-bosh! downwardly mobile down
the bog … A plumber and a thoroughly decent chap – sticks close.
Comes round on a Sunday – and only family do that: Caterpillar
boots furry on the tufty mat as he puts his plunger … right down
the bog – bosh-bosh! And I’d only shat in it … minutes before. He
straightens up … ‘cause he’s straight, smiles, presses the lever and
the awful, clotted mass of toilet paper and … the shit of my flesh
disappears in a cleansing swirl. Steve says: Bosh-bosh! All done,
mate – no need to worry ‘bout that any more. Boss! Boss! Gawain
hears – yet doesn’t hear. He takes a sip from the warm plastic tit,
mm … the milk of Camelbak kindness, and sends his eye along the
upper storey of the bosh-bodged buildings, seeing over-wrought
iron balustrades, airy bricks, post-conflict satellite dishes, a sky-blue
candlewick bedspread flapping on a clothesline, but … no sign
of life. Boss! Boss! There are troopers at all four points, kneeling,
gats ready, faces dead-white, lips sealed, eyes wide open … don’t
bother – they’re here, and so is their SeeOh, who shouts, Drives – stay
at the wheel! Hodges, any eeteeay on the
‘copter yet? Hodges,
involuntarily, looks up … cloud’s still there! Fruit-of-the-sky’s-loom –
particular about his underwear is my boy … Standing in the cold
morning light beneath the dormer, one slim, arched foot raised
… and questing, while Gawain implores him to Stay just another
couple of hours – can’t you? Won’t you? During the run-up to the
invasion, this had become the most frequented of their bivvies:
a bed-and-breakfast near Lincoln Jonathan had seen advertised
on a web site … Bum-Boys Welcome Here, and, once they’d sampled
its creature comforts, proclaimed satisfactory: These chaps’re priceless
– utterly otherworldly, so completely trustworthy … The chaps
in question being Brian and a … my name’s John, too, who, in
near-matching cardigans and beards, closely resemble the parish
councillors they in fact are … The parish being Bardney, a village in
the middle of fucking nowhere, surrounded by a desert of beet fields,
which stretch away … at all four points to where the grey-green
outlines of ancient copses … sail along the horizon. This was a
domesticated side to his wild lover Gawain had fantasised about
but … never dreamt I’d see: Jonathan in shirtsleeves, sitting at an
awkward little breakfast table set with odd bits of china, steaming
toast rack and poxy-little aluminium dishes with blobs of jam and
pats of butter on them … don’t you love farce? Yes – yes, he does:
he loves the long-running Whitehall one – loves also to take it on
tour, with his … trousers down round his ankles. That winter morning,
Gawain had showered second, then came downstairs to find
Jonathan earnestly discussing with John and Brian the odd – and
purely coincidental – fact that his father had worked on some sort
of farming co-op in the area during the war … but only briefly.
And you chaps – what brought you out into these homophobic
wilds? he was saying as Gawain ducked under beams and brushed
past horse brasses on his way across the room. And John – a little
older, a little taller, his beard a touch more pointy – droned on:
We-ell, Brian was working in Doncaster at the time, while I had
a two-year contract down in Dunstable, so neither of us was in a
position, initially, to quit our jobs … Jonathan had been at his