Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘Not just us,’ Dooley said.

‘He had them watching us for miles.’

‘The boy from the Caledonian …’

‘Miles, man.’

‘The boy he shot.’

‘Fucken radioed ahead, didn’t he, Rashid?’

‘It was a day out, man,’ Flannigan said. ‘The fucken white rovers and the heavy metal. It was a day out. You could never have known it was going to be an ambush.’

‘Stop,’ Luke said. He was still nodding after he said the word and put down his whisky. ‘It was a massive fucken error. A massive fucken error, do you hear? I knew the major wasn’t stable. And I knew I wasn’t fucken doing that well, either. And we were your superior officers. And the whole day and the whole fucken next day was bad shit from beginning to end. The boy’s dead and those kids in the orchard are fucken dead, too.’

‘Captain …’

‘We can’t fix it.’

Dooley waited a moment and then the all-nonsense version of his life kicked in and he smiled. ‘I just want to clean my gun, Captain,’ he said.

‘Good on you, Doosh.’

‘I’ll never forget it,’ Flannigan said. ‘Remember the way the major shot him through the eye?’

‘He was dead by then,’ Luke said.

Dooley spun his empty glass on the table with a finger. ‘Was it the good eye or the bad eye he shot?’

‘They were both bad,’ Flannigan said.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Luke. ‘He saw plenty we couldn’t see.’

The privates were young enough to allow every military event to embolden their spirit. That was all. To them, the captain was a defeated man, but they wouldn’t show it: they loved Jimmy-Jimmy. More than any test at home, more than any big event in their own lives, the events on the way to Kajaki would define for them what it means to have your courage measured

and tested against other men. They had grown sure in their hearts that they knew more about real life. The captain was now adrift in the civvies’ lightweight world, so the night was about nostalgia, and that was fine. It was what the two soldiers had expected. ‘He’s never coming back,’ Flannigan said when Luke went off for a minute.

‘What, from the bogs?’ Dooley said.

‘No, you dickwad. To the army. He’s moved on, lad. He’s not coming back and that’s it.’

‘Wish it was me,’ Dooley said.

‘No, you don’t.’

Three pints. Three rums.

‘Christ on a bike, Jimmy-Jimmy. Rum! Have you gone and bought your sailor whites and joined the fucken Andrew?’

‘Bite my todger, Flannigan.’

‘They will, man,’ Dooley said. ‘The Andrew, the British navy. They’ll chomp off your birthday sausage and spit it into the English Channel.’ He leaned over to clink glasses again. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get debaucherous.’

‘Debauched,’ Luke said.

‘Whatever.’

They drank in silence for a moment and then Dooley stuck his hand in his pocket and produced a bag. ‘E, anyone?’

‘Shocking behaviour,’ Flannigan said. Then he poked his fingers into the bag and took out two pills. He swallowed one immediately with a mouthful of rum and the other he slid into the breast pocket of his jacket.

‘Later,’ said Luke.

THE METROPOLE

He wouldn’t have said no point blank. Easier, and less judgemental, to drink your share and subtly dodge the pills. Most of his years in uniform had been spent artificially high or falsely tranquil, states that appeared, with hindsight, to mirror the campaigns themselves. He was the old dog now and in his mind he was easing towards the door. People would say it was all part of the general disorder to have smoked pot with the privates but such people don’t know the British army.

Another few drinks, then up to the darkroom. That was his plan. He didn’t want to bail too early but he knew as he sat there that his compass was set for the off. Listening to himself banter about the army and its characters, its duties and compensations, he saw again how much he had once wished to live like a good, sensible machine. But he’d failed at that. He wanted them to know the failure was his. There was no such thing as an ordinary life. He’d learned that from Anne and he learned it from himself. You can only live a life proportionate to your nature. And he was calm. He was getting there. He could imagine a future less taken up with loss.

‘With a drink in you, Flannigan, you’re an absolute pest to all people of the female persuasion.’ Luke said it as they walked down the promenade and Dooley joined in.

‘He’s even worse on E.’

There was scarcely a group of girls on the prom that Flannigan didn’t stop and ask for a light or the way to another bar, allowing Dooley to bring up the rear with his shorter presence, ogling away. A posse of lip-glossed girls in dangerous heels told them to shut up a minute and listen. What they wanted was the Metropole

Hotel, down at the end of the prom, open late, where they had a great karaoke bar and a disco.

‘Are you the shy, sexy one?’ said a girl wearing something debatably more than a bikini, tottering up to walk next to Luke, offering him the dregs of a Bacardi Breezer.

‘I’m their dad,’ Luke said.

‘Hey, slappers!’ she shouted at the group in front. ‘Wait for me and Dumbledore. We going up the Metropole?’

‘Yo, bitch,’ a girl in front shouted. ‘Get your skinny arse in gear.’

‘Is the place still open?’ Luke asked.

‘The Metropole never shuts.’

‘But isn’t it old people there?’

‘Oh, aye. Like wheelchairs. You’ll love it.’

‘And why would you want to go there?’ he asked.

‘Three answers: cheap drink, cheap drink, and cheap drink. Plus the oldies go to bed and there’s a fuck-off dance floor.’

‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said.

‘Go for it, soldier.’

‘Are those eyelashes real?’

‘Definitely,’ she said. Luke saw the waves rolling up and flattening on the beach, reflecting the lights, the hotel. ‘You don’t seem like a squaddie,’ she said. ‘They do.’

It was foldaway tables in a smelly ballroom. It was a handful of pensioners and a compère with a microphone, a tanned man in a nylon suit that came from another era. He was Scottish and he seemed delighted that ‘the young team’ had arrived and that the girls were already dancing. Luke went to the bar and came back with a tray of drinks. The Scouser was complete. ‘All I want is a big juicy pint.’ We’re on a big night out, he thought, the music

inside him, and these girls are definitely with us. ‘Give it here,’ he said, taking the pint and tanking half of it down. ‘I love beer, me,’ he said, putting down the glass and wiping his mouth. ‘I love beer and I love Blackpool and I could drink a barrel.’

‘Check him out,’ Dooley said. ‘He’s having it.’

‘I’m having it large,’ he said.

The bass was loud and it filled the room. They settled round the table and the girls came back and forth to have swigs from their bottles and to open and close their handbags and fix their make-up. Other groups of young people arrived and the wallpaper began to gleam. ‘It’s just bollocks,’ Dooley said. ‘They have a trial and these three NCOs get off.’

‘Who?’ Flannigan said.

‘The two sergeants and the corporal. Budgies.’

‘What?’ Luke said.

‘The Royal Welsh. These three guys get acquitted the other month. They were beasting a young lad and he died.’

‘It was a normal beasting,’ Flannigan said. ‘The boy was a tit. He was undergoing a reprimand.’

‘Fuck off, Flange. The guy was twenty-three.’

‘So what?’

‘So everything, you twat. The guy was twenty-three and got a bit pissed at a party in the mess. He fucked about with some office equipment and he got smashed for it. But it was too much. They marched him out the next day, it was thirty degrees Centigrade, and they beasted the kid until he had a heart attack. That is totally fucked up, man.’