Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘Let’s cover for him, boss,’ Docherty said. ‘It’s a bad week for him and we can easily cover it.’

‘What is it, his fucken period?’

‘It’s going to be fine here.’

‘Is it? I don’t know what bins you’re looking through, Docherty. But mine tells me there’s Terry crawling up our fucken arses.’

‘It’s fine, sir. We’re covered.’

‘Not yet we’re not. Scullion’s losing it. I’m telling you, Leper. He’s out the fucken game. He’s supposed to be over here commanding his soldiers. He’s the CO. He asked to be out here: he could be back at headquarters eating fucken Pot Noodle, like a normal. But he wanted to be involved with my section and now his head is fucking erupting with crap. You’re seriously telling me he’s fucken sweating his bollocks off in the back of the Vector? To hell with the turbine. It’s about the boys.’

Luke got on the radio. ‘What I’m saying is we’re in the open here and request urgent air cover to the north side of the ridge. We’re just a group. Yes. We’re a short section. The rest of our platoon is manning other vehicles.’ He looked at Docherty and read his thoughts. He flicked the mouthpiece on the PRR down for a second and breathed deeply. ‘But bearing up and holding our position. Over.’

Flannigan was ordered to set up a mortar battery and was now pounding the poplar grove, laughing his big Scouse laugh. ‘That should keep their cakey arses quiet for a bit, lads,’ he said. He looked round at Luke. ‘Eh, Jimmy-Jimmy! Fucking hardly out of my gonk-bag, man. Hardly opened my fucken eyes and these badasses are burning our toast!’

‘Hardly had time to grab my cock,’ Dooley said.

‘That might’ve held us back for a while,’ Luke said, reloading. ‘Waiting for you to find your cock.’

Dooley darted his eyes around the camp. A bullet banged into the metal drum and it spewed diesel but didn’t explode. ‘Get that out of the fucken way,’ Luke shouted to some men at the back. ‘You in 5 Platoon! Ross. Private Bawn. Move it! Get that fucken drum cleared before we have a fucken Guy Fawkes party out here.’

There was a pause. Kind of horrible, the pauses. Luke got back on the radio and tried for more information. His hair was drenched. ‘Roger that,’ he said and looked along the wall at the boys.

‘Where’s the major?’ Dooley said.

‘He’s checking maps,’ said the captain.

‘You what?’

‘I don’t know. Maps.’

‘What’s he checking maps for? We know where we are. We’re up here and they’re down there.’

‘Wind your neck in, Dooley. Just leave it.’

The two men looked at each other and Dooley nipped his bottom lip with his teeth. He got it. ‘No problem,’ he said, a blush perceptible in his manner if not on his face, which was coated in white dust. ‘The major’s always been deadly when it comes to the maps.’

‘Just cover me,’ Luke said. ‘I’ll go and pull over the rest of the platoon.’ But before he moved an inch and before Dooley could turn back to the machine-gun and start pounding the trees, a pair of Apache helicopters found their way into the valley and hovered above the ridge. They were high up but gunning the hell out of the mountainside. Luke shouted at the men to cover their heads and get down. ‘Let’s get the club classics going!’ he shouted. ‘Good life. Good life. Good life. Good life.

Good life!

’ He sang the song with his face down in the dirt and it was bedlam all around. The cannon was tearing up the grove and splitting the trees and Flannigan crouched under his equipment and laughed into the broken wall.

‘

Good life!

’ he returned.

‘Any fucker in those trees isn’t coming out again,’ Dooley shouted.

‘Not for Christmas,’ Flannigan said. The men laughed at this and Lennox passed a cigarette down the line. They had to keep low and the guns didn’t stop overhead and Luke started off the Band Aid song about Christmas. The weird thing they would all remember was the warm, empty cartridges falling from the sky on top of the camp, glancing off the vehicles. Docherty took a few and stuffed them in his pack. The boys smiled as if the fight

was all they had ever wanted and the cartridges fell like golden hail as they shouted a song about feeding the world. ‘Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?’ It was like American Night at Camp Shorabak. The Yanks never stinted on anything and the boys knew they’d be happy to tear up the fields all morning if it meant having one more kill.

Anne opened her eyes and saw the blue sky and the inviting tracks of a passing plane. She blinked, sat up and recalled an old song they used to sing about airline tickets to romantic places. It was warm and the sun played silver over the Firth of Clyde and shone on the windows of the foreign coaches as they made their way to Largs.

And still my heart has wings.

And yellow was the room where she loved him. Down from Glasgow she would wait there in Blackpool and sometimes he didn’t arrive. He just didn’t come, she said to herself, and she’d be sitting there with a shopping bag full of breakfast, the square slice, the plain loaf. And sometimes he changed his mind and he would turn up late, good grief, the middle of the night chucking stones at the window and she’d throw down the key. He’d come up the stairs and she’d bury her face in his neck and say nothing. Oh, the relief. And never to mention the sadness or the fright she’d got. She could still smell his Old Spice and was so glad she had waited.

Nobody ever tells you the natural world has all the answers and keeps count of all the days. They don’t tell you — you work it out. One minute you’re getting on with your tasks, the jobs and the life and all your goals and one thing and another, then, just like that, you notice the smell of burning leaves as you walk past

the playing-fields. The seasons seem for a long time to ask nothing of you, but eventually you must brave their familiarity. Most of the time she felt distant from her old artistic self, but some days, especially in sunshine, the feeling came.

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces.

She was in a deckchair outside reception. ‘Blackpool’, she said to the warden, ‘was often hotter than Spain. I want to go back.’

‘Was it hotter, Anne?’

‘Oh, yes. Hotter than any place. I used to say to my Harry, “You could fry an egg on the pavement down there.” He never believed me. But it was always hot at that time, in the seventies.’

‘The 1970s.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Our Audrey goes to Faliraki,’ the warden said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Greece. Same place every year. Same hotel. She says the drink’s dirt cheap.’

‘Oh. We didn’t have those places.’

Mrs Auld from flat 25 came out to curse the weather. It was never right for Mrs Auld. ‘They’d let you just go down the beach there and get burnt to a crisp.’

‘Who’s they?’ the warden said.

‘You know fine well. The government.’

‘What’s the government got to do with suncream?’

‘Everything, Jackie,’ said Mrs Auld. ‘You mark my words. They keep it back, the government. They make it too dear for pensioners to buy. And we all burn to a crisp, so we do.’

‘Oh, Dorothy!’

‘I’m telling you. It’s true. We’ve all got cancer because of these English prime ministers.’

‘That’s ridiculous. And half of them are Scottish.’

‘Mark my words. I’ve got liver spots on the backs of my hands that I didn’t have before.’

‘Are you going on the bus thing?’ asked Anne without opening her eyes or looking over.