Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘What’s in the horror-bag?’ said a tall kid from Edinburgh

who’d been in the jeep with Docherty and the Afghan soldiers. They had high hopes for the canteen at Maiwand and the queue was long. Luke’s head was miles away. He turned after a moment and saw the kid.

‘Eh?’

‘What’s the snap, Captain?’

‘Curry, I think.

Private Flannigan scraped past with a full tray in his hands. He winked at Luke, who just shook his head and gave him the finger. The canteen was buzzing, the soldiers ate quickly. Luke went over to a corner mess with Major Scullion and listened, not for the first time, while the major gave a lecture about medieval barbarism. Luke knew it was unreal. What was behind all this talk of the British attempt, whether in Bosnia or Kandahar, to obliterate ignorance with firepower? With the smell of boil-in-the-bag curry coming over the partition, Scullion reminded Luke of the defeat once suffered by the British at Maiwand. ‘Your fucking Jocky ancestors were forming a football team in Glasgow around that time,’ he said. ‘God bless them. They were bog Irish like my own, with hardly a kilo of potatoes between the lot of them. And what do you think was happening over here in that year of Our Lord, 1880?’

‘Death and destruction, I presume.’

‘Correct! A British brigade was massacred by 25,000 Afghan savages. A thousand of our lads. And here we are making ready to bring water to the same ungrateful pigs in their madrasas, still teaching their young how to blow up British soldiers who are out here to help them.’

‘They’re mainly in Pakistan, the kind of madrasas you’re speaking about.’

‘Wherever. It’s all the same.’

‘In any case I would cut that speech, sir,’ said Luke. ‘For the briefing. This is a two-day mission requiring tolerance.’

Scullion was in the mood for firing off questions. Luke had seen it before and knew it was coming. ‘You’ve seen this country from the air a number of times?’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘What does it look like to you?’

‘Dunno, sir. Empty. Bleak.’

‘No, Campbell. It looks like bundles of brown blankets slung over history. And that is what it is.’

‘You’ve said that before.’

Scullion stood up and took a few steps and drew his finger down some bullet holes in the window frame. A few hundred yards off he could see whorls of razor wire with plastic bags snagged on the blades. The bags didn’t flutter, they were still, it was hot.

‘Did you have a nice time at university?’ Scullion asked.

‘Just normal, I suppose.’

‘And what did you learn?’

‘I learned how to climb. I was in the climbing club.’

‘What else?’

‘I learned how to drink snakebite and blackcurrant. And I learned that nationalism is a false promise.’

‘Well worth the visit,’ Scullion said. ‘I met my wife at Trinity. We used to lie in bed listening to Duke Ellington. Frost on the trees. Early 1980s. The cleaner in the halls of residence used to bring us a lit Carroll’s cigarette and a cup of tea in the morning.’

‘That’s the life.’

‘It was, Luke. It was the life.’

‘You’re upset, sir.’

‘You know something …’ He sat down and his shoulders sank. It’s not ordinary for a man like Scullion to let his shoulders go. He coughed. Luke knew he had recently split up with his wife. ‘A bad marriage can smash a person’s life for years. You haven’t really lived until you’ve been fucked over by a person who claimed to love you. Some people have it in the bag by the time they’re twenty. But most of us get it at forty or forty-five, the lunatic surge, desperate to take you down. They force you out of your own house and claim you left them. Madeleine was so hormonal and dark I think it actually wiped her memory. She can’t remember what she did. The hostility. I never faced a bigger battle.’

‘Come on, sir,’ said Luke. ‘You fought in Bosnia.’

‘Dead on. I’d faced dictators before but none of them controlled access to my dog.’

‘She never hated you, Charlie.’

‘No, she didn’t. Her negatives were just too deeply cooked into the casserole.’ He smirked and sat down again. ‘But she didn’t love me either. She used me, man. She used me as an alibi against the accusation she was messing up her life.’

‘No way, sir.’

‘Oh, yes. She saw me coming along and she thought, “He’ll do. He’s respectable. He’ll take the sting out of it for a while.” It was her father and mother that did it. They were liars, too. By an early age she was totally fucking destroyed as an ethical being. She could speak endlessly about love but her actions were without it. And that’s evil, Luke. That’s badness for you, right there.’

‘Charlie …’

‘They never see it, those people. They never see what they’re

doing because they’re too busy doing it. And when you finally find them out it’s part of their brilliant act to deny it, to pretend they are the victim and then convince themselves of it. That’s the brilliance, Luke. They lie and lie, those people, and never face up to who they are or what they did. And then they move on to the next person and it’s mansions on top of ruins. Thank Christ there are no children to pass this stuff on to.’

‘Let’s think about the briefing.’

‘Every day there are fresh outrages …’

‘It’s not worth thinking about.’

‘Oh, but it is, Luke. You have to keep good accounts with yourself. Because one day the inspectors come round, the inspectors in your head. The moral cops. And you have to be able to show them what you did. You’ve got to show them that you tried to do the right thing.’

‘People can grow apart, sir. It’s nobody’s fault.’

‘I wish we weren’t here, Luke. I wish we were sitting down at home with a couple of drinks talking about good poetry. Housman or whatever or Ezra Pound. Just to sit down with a bottle of Talisker.’

‘The plan, sir. We need to talk about the plan.’

‘I left her with everything and set her free. She could honour me for that, but she doesn’t.’

‘Doesn’t she?’

‘No, man. She acts like life is just the sum total of what you can get away with.’

‘Right.’

‘And on a bad day I do think that’s quite evil.’

‘It’s not evil if you can’t help it.’

He was probably the toughest guy Luke had ever known, yet

simple things were clearly hard for him as he got older. He was a veteran of many battles but life at home was casting doubt over his authority. Luke wasn’t sure the major had got it right about how to live: the uncomplicated things, the comforts. He was probably a nightmare to live with. Their friendship used to be like a winter coat to Luke. In the regiment, Scullion had always had a reputation as a brave soldier, but Luke wondered if that was even true any more. He wasn’t sure. To him the major looked scarred and self-indulgent, unreliable, and whatever had been tough in him was in danger of going softly malignant. Maybe it was Luke. Maybe the war made him question everything.

‘You think it’s simple?’ Scullion said. ‘Domestic life is harsher than Stalingrad. You’ve got a long way to go, Captain. How old are you, thirty or something?’ Scullion laughed and slapped Luke’s back and then drank his cold tea in one go. Luke saw that the major’s hand was shaking as he lifted the plastic cup. ‘The bottom dropped out,’ Scullion added. ‘I had no ambition. I thought she was out to fucking kill me. And all she had in her arsenal was my feeling for her.’

‘Come on, Major. Take these.’ Luke passed him two sedatives from his wallet. ‘See you out there in twenty minutes.’

‘I would like you and the others to forgive me for anything cruel I’ve ever done,’ Scullion said. ‘Just stuff that I might have said or times when I lost my temper. Like the wee things that stick around and before you know it the person thinks you’ve stopped listening to them. I want you to know I never meant to be cruel about anything. It was only life and sometimes you’re not yourself.’ The smell of baked curry and stewed tea was mixed in the air with unsaid things.