Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Some nations are decent, Luke, and if they want to spread that to backward places then it’s worth it.’

‘Decency?’ Luke said. ‘Do you know why I’ve been drummed out of the army, Mother? Do you want to know exactly? Because my group went into a village where there was a wedding. A small village. People preparing food and playing games and looking after goats. And we were led into a trap but we massacred the whole fucken lot of them. We sprayed them with bullets. We

weren’t even supposed to be there. It wasn’t part of the mission. But we killed them all. Some of those boys were no more than thirteen or fourteen.’

‘I’m sure you—’

‘Don’t be sure, Mum. Don’t be. I was out of my fucken head.’

‘Don’t swear, son.’

‘It was a slaughter in broad daylight. We were smoking spliffs. We were listening to heavy metal. Scots boys. Irish boys and others. All from proud nations. All from freedom-loving nations with statues to philosophers. And then we went into this village …’

‘Son.’

‘No. It was chaos. You want decadence? You want rootlessness? Come to Bad Kichan. I could’ve fired bullets into every building. Into the lady in the wedding dress and the old men and the animals, too. All of them. Just blood. Just the enemy. I didn’t know if I was firing for decency or just gaming. It wasn’t real to me and it’s not real to anybody. So. That’s what I’ve been doing on my holidays, Alice.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘Don’t talk to me about proud nations. That was me. Spreading decency to the world because we have so much to spare.’

‘Oh my.’

‘I’ll never put a uniform on again.’

‘No.’

‘I shamed it and it shamed me.’

Alice was remembering how Sean was the same. He started off believing in all sorts of things for Ireland and by the end he thought the players were part of the same rabble. Maybe it was just hard for soldiers to keep faith. But if Gordon was here he

would put Luke straight on a few things. Nationalism was the way to live in a small country. England had been in charge for long enough and look at the mess they’d made.

‘One of our own boys got killed,’ Luke said. ‘A boy from Dalgarnock. Aged twenty-one.’

‘I know. We saw it on the news.’

Alice slowly shook her head and eventually the mussels came and she ordered more wine. She dipped a piece of bread in the bowl, tasting garlic and herb butter. Being in the Rogano made Alice feel part of something elegant. Gordon might bring her here for St Andrew’s Night and he knew the chef from the markets and was trying to tie them in to an online shop. Luke went outside and when he came back she saw something weary in his handsome face. For the first time, she saw how he might look when he was old. It was a shock, really, because she had never seen his father old. Sean was twenty-six. ‘You still at the smoking?’ she said.

‘I’ll shake it,’ he said. ‘I always start again during a tour. Just being with the boys. They all smoke.’

Alice didn’t know why she needed courage to pat his hand. ‘They said on the news it was drugs. They said the soldiers were smoking drugs.’

‘It catches on. I mean, the boredom. And the Afghans smoke it all day and all night. The boys are like nineteen.’

‘But the major, he wasn’t nineteen, was he? And the newspapers say he was worse than any of them.’ Luke knew there had been stuff in the papers but a public hearing was unlikely.

‘Mum. Just leave it.’

But leaving it just wasn’t Alice. Luke could hear the vague, distant pleasure in her voice as she said the things he didn’t want

to hear. ‘But you’d think a man that age — I mean, practically my age — would know better than to smoke that stuff and then go into a place …’

‘Mum.’

‘… taking boys who can’t see what they’re doing in that state and it was children at a wedding.’

He couldn’t help it but his teeth were gritted when he said it and he felt the heat in his face. ‘Fucking. Stop. Talking,’ he said and he stared hard at her. There was always something weird about Alice’s make-up, as if she didn’t really believe in make-up and was trying it on.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’

‘I just can’t talk about it any more.’

Under the table her hands were shaking. It was just like Sean all over again, Sean talking to her, trying to explain something that men don’t want to explain. And even Luke’s voice was the same as his father’s talking about the army. She had the old feeling of not knowing what to say. She didn’t want to provoke him but what about the practical things? Was he out for good? Would anyone be prosecuted for what happened? Would he just live in Glasgow now and settle down and maybe keep away from all this stuff that preyed on his mind?

‘Can I just say something, Luke?’

‘Knock yourself out.’

‘No, not like that. Nothing big.’ She took a gulp of wine and looked away. ‘I was never able to ask her anything about myself.’

‘You mean Gran?’

‘That’s right. I can’t ask. I can’t say, “What happened in my childhood?” or “What was my father really like?”’

‘Why not?’

‘She made it impossible.’

‘But why?’

‘I don’t know. And I’ve always asked myself, “Why can’t she speak to me?” Everybody has questions.’

‘Yes.’ He could see far down into Alice just then, the quiet, lonely life of his mother who was never free of them all.

‘I always felt my presence wasn’t called for.’

‘Mum …’

‘It’s fine. You learn how to live with these things.’ She took another drink. ‘It was always clear I got in the way of some story she had built about her and my father and what they did, who they were. If I had any doubts or any questions I had to put them away. That’s my life.’

‘Maybe that will change,’ Luke said. She looked at him and knew she was looking at him with all the love she had.

God bless him, she thought, for thinking life was something you solved. ‘I was so envious,’ she said, ‘when you were a boy and the two of you were reading those Dickens novels. You were like a gang. You and my mother and her favourite authors.’

‘They were just books.’

‘No, they weren’t. They were passports. You and she went to unknown places together and I was left behind.’

‘Anyone can read them.’

‘Don’t pretend to be shallow, Luke. You know what I mean. She taught you how to look for more out of life.’

‘I suppose she did.’ He could see the pain in her face.

‘She never told me who I was,’ she said. ‘Just who I wasn’t.’

‘Don’t get upset, Mum.’

‘Some people make life bigger for other people. And I’ve always been on the wrong side of that bargain.’

He just felt awkward. He wasn’t going to say things just to soothe her because she was too shrewd for that. He didn’t quite see it but his instinct was still to hold out against his mother, to stall her sentiment and deny her all the small benefits of possession. And she changed the subject after sniffing to clear the air. ‘All that stuff you’re saying, about not belonging anywhere, that’s just the war talking,’ she said. ‘It’s just because of what you went through in Afghanistan. It’s all the stress and what have you. But I think you know where you belong.’

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and reckoned it would be one of the many texts from the boys in the platoon. He wished he could dive into the carpet and swim to a time when allegiances were clear. The thing he loved about Glasgow was that you never felt truly alone there: a sense of community upbraided you at every corner, but as his eye wandered vacantly over the floor he felt pinched by the local style. ‘Well, Mum,’ he said at last. ‘I wanted life to be more than us. Much more than us. Maybe that’s why I went away in the first place.’