with his essays, words wouldn’t just him obey. Him just words
obey wouldn’t … He sits, blinking at the blinking on-screen cursor,
fixated by all the sharp edges of the screen architecture – and the
virtual shadows they cast. He sits, dirty and sweating … I could
murder a beer, conscious that here, in this little bivouac of light, I’ve
met my Portaloo … The night-time sounds of Camp Val emanate
from the outer darkness: the nearby muttering of troopers on
drag-stag, the hubba-hubba of the generators, the distant yelp of
the dog pack that gathers outside the walls every evening because
once – and only once! – some utterly bone trooper on cookhouse
duties … tossed out some bones. Bessemer and Hodges have long
since gone – the ‘copter bearing them clattering away to the
south – yet everything Gawain’s sore eyes settle on – pencils, paper
clips, a gonk mascot dangling from the computer monitor … by its
no-neck – flinches, as if the rotors … as if the rotors’re about to hit it …
Asif! His Rams, he thinks, performed well enough – after the
intitial shock there’d been no panic: Brit casualties and Iraqi dead
were loaded into the vehicles, and the ‘copter was waiting for them
at Camp Val. There’d been a little confusion – Pythian shouting to
the loadie: We’ve another one here for you! while the paramedics
hauled the stretchers out from the aypeesees, squatting down to
fiddle with tubes and spigots and dressings. A few minutes later the
‘copter plumped up its cushion of dust, hovered for a moment over
the main gate, then swung round, began spitting out chaff and
romped away over the rooftops. Watching from one of the main
gate sangars, Tizer had bellowed: Contact! Bloody contact! But
it’d all been over before Gawain reached him: according to Tizer, a
single heat-seeking sam had come scooting up from the east and,
locking on to some chaff, swerved hard right and disappeared
amongst the tumbledown shacks and vegetable plots along the
riverbank without – so far as he could tell – detonating. But it was
a sam, Tizer – you’re ABSOLUTELY BLOODY CERTAIN
ABOUT THAT? – For fuck’s sake, Greeny, get outta my fucking
face! You trying to snog me, or what? It was only then that Gawain
had realised: he’d backed Major Townshend right up against the
parapet and was spittling his cheeks. The mess that evening had
been subdued … truculent: two men down, and the Rams first
combat casualties in decades. They need us here more than ever,
Gawain had said, his hand shaking, tomato soup making bloody
bullet wounds on the tabletop. Yeah, Tizer grunted, it certainly
sounds like it … They’d both stopped spooning – soaring eerily
above the generators had come this uncanniness: the sound of a
sizeable proportion of Ali al-Garbi’s female population, who’d
gathered outside the main gates, beyond the tee-barrier, and were
ululating … all the grief they’d got. It’s as if, Tizer said, they’re
trying to raise him from the dead with this hocus-pocus … As
if– not Asif al-Sayyab … and Gawain had been grim: No one gives
a shit about him, Tizer – they’re here for the detainees in the
TeeDeeEff. No one gives a shit about a lousy traitorous ’terp – a
mouthpiece for the hated Crusaders … No, and now that mouthpiece
was stopped up with sand, while a ball of dried earth had
been placed beneath his tight and dusty curls, and a carefully folded
Sunderland EffSee tracksuit top laid at his bare feet – how much
do I actually know about Islam and the Muslims? Not much, he’d
thought at supper – and reacknowledges now: ‘sides the fact they’ve
gotta be planted within twenty-four hours of getting … slotted.
Gawain hits the return key – I hit the return key: the grimy and
depressed little return key – and the email whooshes into the
darkness, a dinky tip-tilting envelope which fades into a faintly
oscillating after-presence: a tiny circlet crowning the screen, which
spins and spins, again annagain … But it will return – of that much
he’s certain. Return before tomorrow, when the rugby tournament
is due to kick off … with Japanese and New Zealander teams
battling it out with sevens from … all the home nations. At least,
that was the plan until today: when the Wimmik roared back
into the compound that afternoon, the first thing Gawain had seen
were some of the Japanese contractors practising behind the mean
concrete bunker which now housed the detainees: the Temporary
Detention Facility, or TeeDeeEff. Small men – hairless men …
what would that be like? who tossed the ball blithely back and
forth. A mean concrete bunker – three rooms, one little more than a
coal-hole, the others roughly ten metres square, both equipped with
roughly oblong openings above head-height … in lieu of windows,
their crumbling edges pierced by the sharp serration of steel reinforcing
… up late rubbing Bonjela into Miffy’s gums … There was
a grim sort of vestibule as well – he’d stood in it with Gareth
Trimmingham when they were doing the handover. We’re an equal
opportunities employer, said the Coldstreamers’ SeeOh … thought
he was funny: At least when it comes to entry-level detention –
we’ve ‘ad ’em all in here – Badr lot, Mucky’s boys, local Ali
Babas … There’d been a bad atmos’ in the dank blockhouse: the
wall Trimmer was leaning against had iron hooks hammered into
it from which hung lengths of rusty chain: We harsh ’em a bit – by
the book, though, nothing too hairy … Just getting the message
out. Gawain had looked down at the concrete floor, where there
was an archipelago of stains which he chose to see as a sort of
diagram or flow-chart … explaining … the work which goes on
here. – Nothing iffy, though, Gareth – you’d tell me if there’d
been anything iffy? Trimmer and his Coldstreamers had muscled in
on the Sierra Leone deployment – he’d always been a dab hand
at crawling up brass-arse, had Trimmer. The Thomases had got to
know the Trimminghams when their respective regiments were in
Germany – Trimmer’s wife, Marilyn, had palled up with Fi at an
antenatal class. Big girl, Marilyn – very pale, translucent skin …
au bleu, he remembers the pair of them doing their exercises on the
floor of the Thomases’ three-bed apartment … good deal: five
hundred square metres – four hundred a month, hoiking their heavy
bellies about as they shouted Girl Power! at the ceiling. Yes, good
mates they’d been, Marilyn and Fi, but as for their other halves …
we’d never make a whole. The wives kept in touch, though, and
one hot summer morning the Thomases drove down to Mitcham
for a barbecue – hauling the old Volvo estate round the EmmTwentyfive,
the kids griddling in the back, Gawain’s resentments
poisonously drip-drip-dripping down on to the steering wheel.
Yeah-yeah – class act, the Guards. Officers got to be city-slickers,
commuting into barra
cks from the outer suburbs every day, just
like any other office-bound muppet. Yeah, class-bloody-act – with
the emphasis very much on class … Then, when they arrived in
Mitcham, there’d been instant relief: Trimmer had laid a big bit of
plastic tarpaulin over the back lawn, and he played a hose over it as
all the younger guests stripped off and ran and jumped and slid and
laughed … and screamed. The other families were all army – couple
of bods from Trimmer’s outfit, and a smiley, plump and faintly
worrying character called Forbes who, Gawain gathered – without
needing to be told – was EssEff. Trouble didn’t come from Forbes,
though, who did a lot of Pimm’s … his number one cup runneth over,
then slumped in an armchair in front of the afternoon racing. The
wives huddled up gossiping – and Gawain walked in, unannounced,
on Trimmer and his bods. They were in Trimmer’s den, which
boasted shaggy white floor-covering, squashy-black seating – an
old Space Invaders arcade cabinet in one corner, and Trimmer’s
certificates and citations all over the walls. While on the windowsill,
various shelves, the mantelpiece … bloody everywhere had been
hundreds of whisky miniatures. One of the bods had been passing
Trimmer an open laptop as Gawain entered … a flying-blue-vee,
pointing the way to another world, which, for a moment, they were
unwilling to share with him. But then they had, and to begin
with Gawain couldn’t understand what it was he was looking at –
was this some sort of visual trickery? An image flickering into
another … and back: dress on/dress off, old crone/young beauty,
shapeless mass/pile of severed arms … Routine patrol stuff, Greeny,
Trimmer had said – and in that moment the shapeless mass of his
character had resolved into this bloody atrocity … Trimmer’s
own words sloshed around in his fruit cup of a mouth. Not a big
man, Trimmer Trimmingham – in point of fact, exactly the same
stature as his bountiful wife – but with a large and craggy head.
A tall-short man, who, when Gawain was looking down on him,
somehow contrived to … look down on me. No, not a tall man –
even when he was filmed with a camcorder standing on a pile of
severed black arms slathered with crimson blood. No. They’d all
stood there in the darkened den – Trimmer, Gawain, Trimmer’s
bods – the chilly uplight from the laptop bathing their faces, as
they took in this … anatomy lesson. Then Trimmer had hit the
return and the scene shifted a few hundred yards on. Seeing
Gawain’s expression, Trimmer had reiterated: Routine patrol stuff
– and one of the bods put in: Who was it that day, Boss, the arfs or
the rufs? Rather than answer directly, Trimmer deftly manipulated
the keys so the images staggered towards them – images of children
only a year or two older than the ones who were frolicking outside
in the sunny Surrey afternoon. Children wearing cotton shorts
and T-shirts printed with the colourful logos of YouEss teevee
shows and cartoon characters, who were sitting on the ground in
stress positions. Children who’d been deprived of their AyKays –
which were leaning against the exposed chassis of a technical that’d
rolled over beside this nameless jungle trail, presumably marking
the spot at which Trimmer and his merrie men had caught up
with them. Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, Trimmer said for
Gawain’s benefit. Those were the fuckers responsible for most of the
limb-severing – though the rufs, the so-called Revolutionary United
Front, would get in on the act whenever the oppo’ presented
itself … As he’d spoken, the camera had tracked back and forth,
focusing first on one face, then another: a fly strolled along a faintly
moustached top lip – sweat polished an ebony forehead. – Our
patrols’d come upon this sorta badness – then we’d catch up with
the perps easily enough. Why, Greeny? Well, two reasons: first,
they’d been running round in that jungle for fucking years with
no one on hand to give ’em a slap. Secundo: well, as you can see –
arfs, rufs, the other mob as well, all ranks were made up with
kiddy-winkies. Take away the stick of sugarcane they were sucking
and hand ’em a fucking gat – after you’ve fucked ’em, course … The
man filming must have walked backwards at this point, because
the view widened out to the entire clearing: the Brit grunts standing
about, in their jungle camos with bush-hat brims pushed up,
chatting, swigging from their canteens, wiping their mouths and
then rubbing their palms together – a universal gesture, intended to
convey to anyone watching … actions speak louder than words. Yes,
actions speak louder than words, what with small arms for the
eighties still saving … small arms in the noughties. But that hadn’t
been the end of it – the camera went on moving: its angle dropping
so that the forest’s ferny floor filled the viewfinder. There’d been,
Gawain thinks, an awful complicity in sharing this jerky and downcast
vision. Outside, all their kids frolicked in perfect safety – inside
Gawain’s chest his heart hammered. He’d wanted to turn away …
go away, but he’d been trapped in the tiny scrum of Coldstreamers.
who’d wandered into this darkened chamber … without knocking.
Gawain wheezily squeaked, Y-You d-didn’t, did you, Trimmer?
And Forbes had answered for him: What? Whacked ’em in cold
blood? I hardly think so, my horsy friend – we were in country for a
bit of lurping first, and I believe Trimmer’s mob followed on with
our EmmOh … See, your child soldier can be as bloodthirsty as
anyone – but they’re buggers to keep in line, and they’ve fuck-all
in the way of initiative. No: turn left at the cairn of amputated
arms and keep right on ‘til you run right into the little surgeons.
Confession’ll be easy enough to extract – if you’ve a bag of Haribo
to hand … Which had been Trimmer’s cue to say: Fortunately
we did, Bill … Yes-yes … Gawain buries his head in his hands,
adopting his own stress position. That’s what Trimmer’d said to Bill
Forbes the EssEff bod: Fortunately we did – got my Queue-man on
it before we deployed … A top tip, Gawain had thought at the
time, which was why he’d had a few when the Rams were forced to
adopt the stress position: sitting, knees bent and embraced by aching
arms, praying for glory or deliverance in the Herc’s booming nave,
while listening to the men’s … boys, really chorus as they strapped
themselves into the webbing: Gorrany scran, Bessie? And the gawky
one with the wanker’s wristbones chucked the rustling bag in a wide
arc … tangtastic! All the awkward positions – the stressed positions
the Rams’re forced to adopt … the pillowslip coldly moulding his
face – the lube a chilly dash-then-splodge between his buttocks –
the bracken swishing and scratching your thighs, the heather
twist
ing your ankles, the sun cooking through to your … marrow.
Sixteen-mile yomp – fifty-pound pack: sew a couple of Oxo cubes
into the hem of your keks – DoubleyouOhs never check there …
Something to suck on when the going gets … stressful. All the
awkward positions – the stressed positions he forced me to adopt …
No more! It must be thirty-five degrees still in the Portakabin, and
the sweat carries on spurting out of me … a hose played across
Gawain’s slippery plastic sheeting. You’d tell me if there’d been anything
iffy, wouldn’t you Trimmer? Gawain had asked Colonel
Trimmingham in the dirty, dusty, sandy, stained vestibule … were
we a pair? It’d been a repeat of the stressful position he’d been forced
into in Trimmer’s Mitcham den: bent over, compelled to look at
the screen and equally unable to make the right noises – the bods’
small, appreciative yeahs and deferential coughs. The two young men
had been arranged on the grassy slope beside the jungle track –
laid on their sides, facing one another … lovers, post-coitally cooing,
with flies buzzing around their eyes – moseying in and out of their
nostrils … again annagain. They wore the same undress uniforms as
the children they’d mutilated, but in their case the T-shirt designs
were a bit more unconventional: tight groupings of bullet holes …
must’ve fired at fairly close range still oozing blood. One for the
archives, eh, Trimmer? Forbes had said as Trimmer snapped shut
the laptop. You wouldn’t want some sensitive Guardian-reading
soul seeing that, now would you? But what’s their solution for evil
cunts like that, machetes dripping blood? There’d been a subdued
grunt of manly assent like they’d, all come, Gawain had thought in
Trimmer’s den – thinks it again now, in the damp crotch of the Iraqi
night: It was like they’d all come – Trimmer, Forbes, the bods …
they’d shaken themselves, legs trembling in their chinos and
EmmanEss cargo shorts. – Emerging from the jungle, they’d heard
the joyous shrieks of the children playing outside in Mitcham. One
by one they’d improved their grip on their glasses, bottles and
cans, before filing out to join them. It’s a dirty and dehumanising
job, their expressions had said: killing adolescents who’ve mutilated,