Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘Listen, Luke. Are you homesick?’

‘Don’t make this about me.’

‘But, are you?’

‘I’ve been homesick all my life.’

‘Good. That’s a good answer. You’re an intelligent man and you should pay attention to these facts.’

‘I’m not your pupil any more.’

‘That’s right. Your contempt has run ahead of your wisdom. And you no longer have a use for me.’

‘This unit … this regiment has need of a senior officer in the field, sir, who does not absent himself during a major firefight. Can you explain yourself?’

‘As a matter of fact … I can’t.’

‘They said you fell asleep.’

‘I wasn’t asleep, Luke. I was in the Vector. I was on the floor of the Vector, to be accurate.’

‘And you decided it would be a good idea to leave a group of your own soldiers, average age eighteen, to survive and then recover from a heavily armed ambush by unknown enemy forces? You decided this was the best way to deploy your experience, did you? The best way to exhibit your leadership?’

‘I didn’t decide anything, Luke. I was frozen to the spot and that is simply what happened.’

‘You’re a fucken coward!’

‘So it would appear.’ Scullion didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. And as the seconds passed he seemed almost relieved.

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘So do I. But it happened. Plain as that. I couldn’t move.’ He spat his gum onto the ground and looked at it. ‘Do you know how many countries I’ve fought in, Captain?’

‘I couldn’t guess.’

‘Just about all of them. Wherever we had a decent amount of hostility. And here’s my hand on my Northern Irish heart to tell you I was never scared in any of them. In fact, I was overjoyed.’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘You know the phrase, “They have blood on their hands”? Well, I have blood on my hands, comrade, buckets of it, all in the

cause of something good and something noble. Democracy.’

‘So you decide to launch your new career as a white feather just at the very moment when my boys are in danger? You leave them to a firefight in the dark, do you? Exposed on a hill? What the fuck is happening to you, Charlie? Are you losing your mind?’

‘I might be. It might be that.’

‘Not on my fucken watch.’

He sniggered. ‘Little Luke Campbell, who joined the army to find his daddy. Ends up confronting real-life danger and real-life fear. Shall I phone your mammy, Luke — get her to come up and turn your Xbox back on? Get you back to your nice wee world of video game combat, eh, my friend? Piling up the points. Topping the leader board. This nasty world of real people and unexpected turns doesn’t really suit you, does it?’

‘You’re sick, Charlie. That stuff with your wife has made you mental or something.’

‘Oh, we’re all mental. You think all this fighting was making me wise? Making me braver? Here’s the lesson, brother: it wears away at you; there’s less of you every day.’

‘There’s less of what?’

‘Less life. Less cause. Less morality. Less belief. Less judgement. Less energy. Less fucken hope. Just less. Know what I mean?’

‘You know what, sir: I don’t fucken think I do.’

‘Well, you should. Captain Sharp-as-a-Needle. Mr Up-at-the-Crack-of-Dawn. Where’s your fighting spirit now? It’s not just about me, all this. When you joined this regiment you wanted to police the world. What a sight you were. You wanted to arrest every bad guy with a mobile phone. No territory was too hostile for Private Ego and his wish to shape the future. That’s what made us friends. What happened to all that?’

The major’s words burned into him as they had in the days when he felt ideas could make him a better soldier. ‘Your private troubles,’ he said, ‘are threatening the lives of my men, and I won’t stand for it.’ Luke stepped forward and was up in the major’s face. ‘I’ll destroy you first. Soon as this mission is over, I’m reporting you.’

‘You’ve waited all your life for this, little Luke. I hope you’re enjoying your moment.’

‘The boys needed you …’

Scullion was shaking and blinking and as he turned sideways he put his hands under his armpits. ‘And I needed them. I did. But I wasn’t available and it makes me sick to my stomach.’ His face flushed when he said those words and he looked as if he might vomit on the farmhouse floor. He bent over, taking deep breaths with closed eyes, and when he looked up thirty years of humanitarian fatigue was on his face. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t say it and then tried again. ‘I don’t sleep,’ he whispered, ‘and I may never sleep again. Those pills you gave me — I need more of them. I need to stop my insides turning.’

‘You need to leave, Charlie.’ They could hear the revving of vehicles outside.

‘I don’t think I can. They’ll have to kill me.’

‘Don’t be daft, Major,’ Luke said, suddenly younger again. It made him sad to see how willingly Scullion accepted blame. ‘The whole point of what I’m saying is you’re not fit for the boys. They need you. All your experience and what you have to offer.’

Scullion slung on his rifle. ‘All my experience,’ he said, laughing in Luke’s direction and twisting his mouth. ‘All my terrific experience and all the army’s experience, too.’

‘There’s life after this,’ Luke said. Then he turned from Scullion

and walked out of the compound, leaving him. He didn’t look round and just marched out through the door as if there would be a parade ground out there on the other side, a place of flags and proud families instead of a culvert spewing dirty water into a poppy field.

CONSTITUTION

When they weren’t on duty Flannigan called him Luke and sometimes Jimmy-Jimmy, a joke on his Glasgow accent. The two had got to know each at the barracks in Salisbury and grown close at Camp Bastion. Luke tended to look towards Flannigan for basic back-up. During the second day of the Kajaki mission, while the boys bantered in the moving Vector, Flannigan looked over and remembered what Luke had said after the fighting had stopped on the ridge. He said his father had died because of an ambush in Northern Ireland. He said he’d hardly known him but had always lived with the idea of his bravery. Flannigan saw how mortified Luke was by Scullion and the way he’d hung back from the action.

‘It doesn’t matter, lad,’ Flannigan said. ‘He was stoned and he’s probably not used to weed like that.’

Flannigan was ten years younger. He was clever in a way that had nothing to do with books. Like Luke, he was two guys, the guy in the van and the one in his head, but Flannigan had a stronger army constitution than the captain. He knew that great people often turned out to be rubbish and he thought it normal. That night up on the ridge, after the guns stopped, after the tracer went dead and the Apaches disappeared, the platoon stood around

in a state of mellow disbelief. The smoke still hung over the camp and the stars, good God, the crazy stars were out for real.

THE SOUNDS

The convoy had stopped again. It was an improved part of the road, so the sappers and ordnance guys didn’t trust it and were out checking for roadside bombs and tripwires. The boys in Luke’s group didn’t move when Scullion opened the passenger door and jumped down. Lennox had

Now

magazine down his shorts and was chuckling and saying something they’d heard before about a tattoo he wanted.

Luke was filling in a form. ‘What’s your Zap number, Lennox?’

‘LA104,’ he said, still laughing at his own antics. He pushed the magazine down further but made a serious face. ‘My last wish is to be buried with the Mondeo. Please make a note. You can drive it into the sea off the Ballygally Holiday Apartments. That’s where I was happiest.’