Chris Cleave - Incendiary

With my eyes closed I could see right through the landmarks and right through the East End I could see my boy playing in the long grass in his yellow wellies I could see everything very clearly.

—Oh god Terence oh god we can start again you and me. We can start again like new.

Afterwards I felt sad and a bit sore and we sat next to each other on the bench and smoked Terence’s Marlboro Reds. We didn’t look at each other we just looked out at the big grey nothing on the outside of the glass.

—This is the closest I’ve been to heaven, said Terence Butcher.

—You’re joking aren’t you? Are you telling me you’ve never been in a plane?

—I don’t mean the height, he said. I mean the feeling.

—Oh.

I thought about heaven.

—Didn’t there ought to be angels and nice food and all your old family back from the dead?

—That’s Hollywood heaven.

—Oh.

—This is British heaven. It’s low cost. This is EasyHeaven.

I smiled and stretched up and kissed him and when I next looked out we were out of the clouds again and we were going back down. You could see the Houses of Parliament small enough so you could of picked it up and cut your fingers on its sharp little spines.

Terence put his hand under my chin and turned my face up so I was looking at him.

—There’s something I have to tell you, he said. About May Day.

—Oh Terence love let’s not talk about May Day. We’re in heaven remember? Just you and me. Don’t spoil it.

I stubbed out my ciggie on the underneath of the bench. The ground was getting closer now. You could see the lampposts of the South Bank coming up to meet us like slow cold missiles through the rain.

—I have to tell you, said Terence. If we’re going to see each other like this I can’t keep it to myself.

I lit another ciggie. Terence put his hand on my shoulder but I shrugged it off.

—What are you on about?

—Decisions, he said. In my line of work you run up against some terrible decisions. But you have to go through with it. It’s your duty.

—What does this have to do with May Day?

—Your husband understood duty, said Terence Butcher.

—My boy was 4 years and 3 months old. He understood eff-all. What is your point exactly?

Terence took the cigarette out of my hand and took a drag. He sucked the smoke right down into his lungs and held the cigarette up in front of him and looked at it like he was hoping it would kill him before he had to answer. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down.

—We knew about May Day, he said. 2 hours before it happened.

—Nah. Anyway. Look. We’re nearly back down. Look my lipstick isn’t too smudged is it?

I stood up and started smoothing my skirt down but Terence pulled me back to the bench.

—Sit down, he said. Listen. We knew.

—You knew? How?

—We’ve got a mole, he said. An agent in the May Day cell. He got a message to us while the bombers were still on their way to the match.

—Nah. Cause if you had 2 hours warning you could of stopped

it.

—Yes, said Terence Butcher. But the decision was taken not to stop it.

I just stared at him.

—This is going to be so hard for you to hear, he said. If we’d acted to stop May Day then the terrorists would have known something was up. They’d have changed everything. All their people. All their places. Everything. We’d have lost all insight into what they were planning. And we couldn’t let that happen. The stakes are too high. We know the May Day cell are planning another attack. A hundred times worse than May Day.

—I can’t believe I’m hearing this Terence Butcher. You knew? You personally?

—Yes, he said.

—And you decided not to do anything?

—I didn’t decide, he said. The decision was taken at the very highest level.

—Bollocks to the very highest level. YOU knew.

—Yes, he said. Of course I could have broken ranks and stopped it. And the reason I didn’t was because I agreed with the decision. And I still do. We couldn’t have known the casualties would be so high.

I stared at the glowing orange end of his cigarette and watched my boy burning to death in it. He was screaming MUMMY SAVE ME only I couldn’t come and save him could I? Because I was stuck in a glass bubble with the man that killed him and I was still aching from where I’d had him inside me. I wonder Osama if you are starting to get how it feels yet?

I grabbed Terence Butcher’s hair and twisted his head round so he was looking in my eyes.

—You miserable fucking bastard.

AT THE VERY HIGHEST LEVEL. That was the moment Osama. When he said those words I stopped blaming you for my husband and my boy and I started blaming Terence Butcher. He murdered them. He just used your Semtex to do it with.

—I’m sorry, said Terence Butcher. I shouldn’t have told you. I thought you’d understand.

I started crying and Terence held my face and he wiped away my tears with those same fingers he used to stroke my back in cheap hotel rooms and hold mugs of tea and dial the number of the phone call that killed my boy. I took the ciggie back off him and I sat there with it. I was just crying a bit and trembling and thinking nothing much till the ciggie burned down into the skin between my fingers. Then the pain hit me and I screamed and screamed like my boy must of screamed when the flames cut into him and then I puked up all over London and the puke ran down the inside of the glass down over St. Paul’s Cathedral and down towards the Thames and when our bubble reached the ground again and the door slid open I ran out and I ran along the South Bank in the rain shouting THEY KNEW THEY KNEW THEY KNEW and people were gawping at me like I was a madwoman and I suppose they did have a point Osama because they were just standing under the London drizzle but I was running screaming through falling drops of phosphorus with my little boy running after me shouting MUMMY WAIT FOR ME!

I didn’t go back to Jasper and Petra’s place I went home to the Wellington Estate instead. I just turned up like a homing pigeon I didn’t really know how I got there. Up in the flat I sat very still in the lounge looking out the window. The sun went down and the sun went up the way it does. After a day or 2 the phone started ringing I suppose it must of been work wondering where I was. I just listened to the sound of the phone it never occurred to me to go and pick it up.

I’d still be sitting there now with my bones turned to dust on our old Ikea sofa but it was the hunger drove me out of the flat. There’s only so much nothing your body will put up with I suppose and so one day I just sort of woke up in the corner shop on Columbia Road eating pink iced buns straight off the shelves. The woman came out from behind the till and put her hands on her hips and stood there in her dark-grey hijab watching me stuffing my face.

—You are going to pay for all that aren’t you? she said.

I just looked at her with my mouth jammed full and icing dribbling down my chin I couldn’t work out what she was on about. She smiled and shook her head.

—Tea? she said.

—Tea.

I knew that word it was solid it was a great comfort like the noise the handbrake makes when you pull it on at the end of a long trip. The woman took me through a curtain made of plastic rainbow strips into the back room of the shop. It was nice in there it smelled of old bits and bobs and there was a little stereo playing Radio 1. I sat on a green sofa with the arms worn through and an orange cat came and gawped at me. The woman made me strong tea with sugar and we sat there till I felt better. It was a small room and there were all kinds of posters on the walls. There was Wayne Rooney and Mecca and Medina and Avril Lavigne. I swear to god Osama that woman’s head was all over the shop you could only of bombed parts of her.