Gregory Norminton - The Devil’s Highway

He makes it to the top of the hill. Twenty-three and he can still hack a bit of exercise. A few more paces and the trees give way to patchy scrub. He trained on land like this in Germany, but the sand and soil were no preparation for Afghanistan, its thin dust a powder over everything – in his skin, his hair, the parts of his rifle. Some days the dust was a beast, surging up in the downdraught from a chopper as if it wanted to smother it. Like the brownout when the Slick came for Chris and Gobby.

Who washed the dust out of their wounds? Did some of it travel home in their plywood coffins?

Fuck it – he lights a bine.

What is he going to say to Bekah? What arrangement of words can he come up with that would change anything with his sister?

He walks across the Poors Allotment, treading down the heather, dropping ash into it. He sees the burnt-out car, its rusted hull pierced by birch saplings. Strangely comforting that, knowing even the ugliest things will disappear. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. What could grow out of him to obscure the sights in his head? They come at him in the day but worse at night. Sometimes, too anxious to sleep, he walks up and down Church Road or into the dark of the forest. Last Saturday, after pub closing, he kept going along the A30 as far as the golf shop on Jenkin’s Hill. Stood in its empty car park thinking: top spot for a sniper, you can see a mile down the road.

He is level now with the telecoms tower. It stands behind gates and razor wire, though it wouldn’t be hard to get in if the fancy took him. He drops his fagbutt on the gravel and crushes it under his boot-heel. Has a quick sniff of his armpits. Tests his breath. She won’t chuck him out if he pongs, not without a second reason. Still, a man has his pride.

In the Old Dean estate, people are either at work, asleep, or plonked in front of breakfast TV. Plenty of curtains are drawn and there’s nobody about on the pale grass between houses. Outside Bekah’s block he looks for Stu’s van, but it’s not there.

He rings the buzzer and waits a long time. Probably she’s trying to pick Annie up, or yelling at Barry to turn his music down.

‘Hello?’

‘Bekah, it’s me.’ The intercom breathes static. ‘Can I come up?’

She lets him in and he goes slowly up the stairs. The echoey landing, the dead tomato plants outside 2C, then ARCHER, Stu’s surname where theirs used to be.

Bekah has put the latch on. He steps into the hallway that smells of last night’s supper and the nappy bin. There are noises from the utility space, where he finds Bekah putting a load on while Annie sits playing with an empty bottle of Fairy Liquid. His sister presents him with a hard, perfumed jaw to kiss. His niece pays him no attention – she knows Aitch has nothing for her.

‘You didn’t tell me you were coming over.’

‘It’s not exactly far. Where’s Barry?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Stu’s at work, is he?’

‘Where else would he be?’ Bekah closes the drum of the washing machine and selects the economy cycle. Annie has shaken a drop of soap from the bottle and is spreading it with her foot on the lino.

‘I’m parched – can I get a glass of something?’

‘We’re out of squash.’

‘Tap’s fine.’

Aitch escapes to the kitchen and pours himself a glass. He does a quick recce in the drawers and finds a pack of fags under some fliers. He shakes it at her when she comes in. ‘Silk Cut? That’s like inhaling air.’

‘Oi, thief.’

‘When d’you start on these?’

‘I haven’t,’ says Bekah, ‘they’re just in case.’

‘In case you give up?’

‘Go on, you can have one.’

‘Hardly worth it.’ Yet he scrabbles for a cigarette and steps out on the balcony to smoke it. A hand appears behind him and shuts the French window.

When he’s down to the filter, he flicks the butt to the pavement and knocks for readmission. Bekah has made a brew and he sits beside her in the living room, Annie squatting on her heels making marks on the Etch A Sketch.

‘You just come to say hello?’ asks Bekah.

‘As opposed to?’

‘As opposed to having news. Job interviews, getting on benefits.’

‘I’m not a scrounger.’

‘Neither am I, but I take what’s owed to me and the kids.’ Bekah pushes a plate of chocolate Hobnobs his way. ‘So there’s nothing?’

‘Can’t I just come for company?’

‘Course you can.’

‘When Stu’s at work.’

‘He’s not gonna stop you calling.’

‘He stopped me living here.’

‘Don’t start.’

‘I wasn’t taking up much space, was I?’

‘Harry, it was like having a fucking black hole in the living room. You sat around all day looking depressed.’

‘I needed something to do.’

‘Yeah and you got it.’

The stacking job at the Co-op. Long days under neon. Christ, it was bone. But it got him out of the flat, out of Bekah’s hair. Till he decked a punter who startled him with a question about broccoli.

‘I’ll get myself sorted.’

‘How?’ Bekah stares at him. ‘What’s different, what’s changed since you were stoned on that sofa playing Xbox and watching …?’

She can’t say it: filth. ‘You don’t think I can hack it.’

‘Course I do.’

‘No you don’t. You think I’m fucked for life, some wreck with a Rupert in his head telling him he’s shit.’

‘What are you talking about?’ His little niece begins to whine. Bekah picks her up and Annie pats her mother’s face, almost slapping it. Bekah carries her into the bedroom and he can hear the quack and jingle of some kids’ cartoon. She comes back at him. ‘What are you talking about, a voice in your head?’

‘Forget it.’

‘That’s not good, Harry.’

‘Don’t call me Harry.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t like it.’

She stares at him. He looks for somewhere safe to bury his eyes. ‘Don’t you think you should see someone?’

‘Christ, if I’d known it was gonna be like this I’d have stayed in bed.’

‘Why’d you come and see me then?’

He looks at her feet that are swelling over the edge of her grey pumps. Her ankles look grey, elderly. ‘I thought I could stay for lunch. Take Annie to the playpark. I don’t mean on my own – obviously you’d be there.’

In the bedroom his niece laughs and shouts ‘dog, dog’.

‘I’m only doing spaghetti hoops,’ says Bekah.

‘That’s OK.’

‘Then I have to put her down for her nap.’

‘I won’t stop you.’

‘I’ll just go and check on her.’

Even now he can’t talk to his sister. Like on tour, when he got his twenty-minute phone call. Standing there hearing the kids in the background and Bekah asking how he was, what it was like, and him thinking, I saw three men get vaporised in a drone strike, we held a memorial service in the cookhouse for a teenager from Crawley, I’m scared I’ll bottle it next time there’s a contact. None of this would have made sense back home, so he told her it was hot and Gobby sent his love and how were the kiddies, how was work?

The front door opens and he’s off the sofa before Stu has put his toolkit down. It’s as if he can smell Aitch, coming straight into the living room with his long snarky face. ‘Wasn’t expecting to find you here,’ Stu says.

‘All right, mate.’

‘Where’s Bekah?’

‘With Annie.’

Stu is lean, a greyhound of a man, but he fills the room. ‘How’s things with the trendy vicar?’

‘All right.’

He looks at Aitch down his long nose. ‘She’s relaxed with your mess, is she?’

‘She’s not up my arse like some RSM, if that’s what you mean.’