Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

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from the golden period, a child-man, subject to sentimental affection from the clubbable men of England.

‘But don’t forget I’m Irish, Rashid,’ said Scullion. ‘I’m probably more like you, when all’s said and done.’

‘You are tired, sir,’ said Rashid.

‘The boys are fine. They have each other. A senior officer has to stand apart.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Though some officers don’t know it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You know who I mean?’

‘You are speaking of Captain Campbell, sir? I see you do not like each other as you once did.’

‘He’s the judge and jury, my friend,’ Scullion said. ‘But you see he knows nothing about life. He thinks we are all just characters in his drama. He can’t see any more why we are fighting. Such men lose faith and then they blame their brothers. I’ve seen it before.’

‘And you, sir. You still have faith?’

‘I have a task, so I do. My task is to help push the operation to a successful conclusion.’

‘But you are tired, sir.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Very tired.’

‘Luke has read some books. That’s something. Shame that it makes him see sickness everywhere.’

‘But you are sick, sir.’ As he said this, Rashid raised his patch to itch the skin around his eye and Scullion saw a gnarled, ragged hole. And, right there in the open air the major felt sick: he looked into the dead socket and his mouth went dry. Scullion knew finally that his nerve had gone. The years of shredded bone and sudden cries and blood on the grass were behind him, and he was lost, not knowing what to say or how to be. Just this blank disgust holding him there and sapping his spirit. He spat

a plug of chewing gum onto the ground between them.

‘Pick that up,’ he said.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Pick it up.’

Rashid was silent. Scullion always liked the way he took his time to talk, searching through the concept before lighting on the word. ‘I want to learn how to speak more like you,’ he said. ‘In pictures.’

‘You will, Rashid.’

‘For my own people.’ Rashid picked up the piece of gum and put it in his mouth and he stared at the major with an unreadable expression. ‘Dust,’ he said. ‘I like the taste of my own land.’

It was hotter than usual and Scullion gave orders and checked supplies among his group and at various times that day he shivered with a secret revulsion. He didn’t know why.

A commander in Bosnia once told him he had no politics. It was the day after a young fellow Scullion was mentoring got shot in Vitez. ‘You’re a typical modern soldier,’ the commander said, ‘partly because you trust nothing. Everything’s doable and everything’s bullshit. You think like a flame-thrower, Scullion. You want to burn away the enemy and scorch their minds, without knowing what their minds are.’

‘Is there another way?’

‘We need to find one,’ the commander said.

‘Well,’ Scullion said, ‘you’ve slept peacefully in your bed for fifty years.’

‘Peacefully? I don’t know about that, Charlie. Any peace we’ve had is because we’re not really thinking. If we actually understood what we were doing in the world we wouldn’t ever sleep again.’

Around midday, Scullion poked his head out the top of the Vector and spat down on the road. ‘Fucking A,’ he said. As they

moved up the track a flock of partridges scooted over the wall of an orchard. Scullion’s eyes followed the birds as they flew into a field and then a larger bird dived down to a puff of feathers. You couldn’t be sure of anything because of the heat and the way reality was bent by the temperature.

‘Hawthorn sixty-eight. This is zero.’

The radio was loud in the Vector and he could hear the boys crapping on. ‘Shut your gobs,’ he shouted down. ‘If it’s hot weather you want you should try Kuwait in July.’

‘What?’ asked Lennox.

‘Our fucken rifle grips were melting out there.’

He ducked back down and saw Captain Campbell sweating on the bench with his shirt off. It was a furnace and the heat’s weight was dragging down their eyelids, but Luke stared at the major with a face full of accusation. He couldn’t empty his mind of how Scullion had missed the ambush. It made him sick to think of it and he could still see the major climbing from the Vector after the firing stopped, that look, as if fatigue and horror had taken over at the end of a long march.

CULVERT

They came to a farmyard that was known to Luke. He hadn’t seen it before but it existed in his head, grey stone walls, a run of trees by the road and a covered ditch hewn from the farm into the field. A man and a small boy were walking away from the building and the boy carried a helium balloon on a red string. ‘That’s weird,’ Dooley said. The farm was bombed out and the boy didn’t look over at the soldiers.

‘The Yanks give them out to the kids,’ Scullion said. ‘Why the fuck are we stopped here?’

Luke watched the child going off, a large Disney princess in an aqua-blue dress floating above him. ‘I want these rifles clean,’ Scullion said. ‘Get your wire brushes out.’

‘It’s forty-eight degrees, sir,’ said Luke.

‘I don’t care if it’s the fucking

Towering Inferno

I’m sick watching this section sit on its arse.’

Luke turned to the boys. ‘Open your kits. I’m taking a radio and we’re going to check out this compound. Okay?’ He looked back at Scullion. ‘You and me, sir. We’re going to check the safety of this shed.’

Scullion put on his helmet and raised his rifle and followed the younger officer into the farm. Rashid walked from the vehicle behind and Luke noticed his shirt was soaked in sweat. ‘It is okay,’ Rashid said. ‘This farm is safe, you can go in.’

‘And how do you know that, Rashid?’ Luke turned and squared up to him by the broken stones in the yard. ‘Would that be your fucken sixth sense or is it your priceless contacts with the enemy?’

‘This building has been cleared.’

‘By whom? Not by me.’

‘We have the surveillance plan.’

‘No, Rashid. Your head is a surveillance plan. I don’t fucken trust you as far as I could throw you.’ Rashid stepped back and put up his hands and shook his head like a professional.

‘We are the same rank. I will not be disrespected.’

‘No? Well, you can take your one beady eye and fuck right off over there, Captain. I am having a private meeting with Major Scullion of the British army. Fuck off, I said.’

The boys liked it. They liked his style. And they liked nothing

more than sudden anger directed at a local. They thought Rashid was all right but a bit of a crawler, and the captain’s way of sorting him out had them enthralled over in the Vector. Rashid just walked away and none of them turned their heads as he passed. When Scullion and Campbell went inside, the boys just fiddled with their rifles and then dropped onto the road. They started a game at the edge of the field with a few Royal Scots, playing football with some empty water bottles in a plastic bag.

There was chicken shit on the floor. Scullion flicked a gum wrapper and turned at the wall to look up at his young friend. ‘He’s one of us,’ he said. ‘You should be nicer to our allies.’

‘He’s irrelevant.’

‘A little keen, maybe.’

‘He’s got nothing to do with our section.’

‘He’s with us,’ Scullion said. ‘Mainly, he’s with us. And you can’t blame them for having maybe a … heightened sense of desecration, what, with everything that’s going on?’

‘It’s not the 1840s,’ Luke said. ‘And this is not your private army.’

Scullion made a show of listening carefully to him and then he walked to the far end of the room. Light came from the internal courtyard and he seemed to absorb the light and draw strength from it.