Nothing. Clean as a whistle. Just burning. Same with cum. I couldn't even have a J. Arthur Rank without my spunk burning. There was something wrong me but they couldn't find out what it was.
I lost my job with Group 4. The lads called me "Winker" behind my back. I didn't mind that, but when one of them tried to take the piss out of me one day I broke his jaw. And his arm. And wrist. And I faced charges and I had to do a stretch. I was helped by an army lawyer and my previous clean record helped but I still had to do a stretch in Winson Green.
The Arab used to come to me in prison. Come as a guard, come as one of the other cons. There was another bloke in there from the Gulf, ex-Para, hard-case. Clever bloke. Good lad. In the nick the ex-army boys used to stick together. No one would fuck about with us. He used to talk a lot about the Gulf. Why we were there. Opened my eyes, it did. At first I used to want him to shut up, but he wouldn't let it go.
—It gets better.
This is how he used to talk. He'd always say
it gets better
when he was about to tell you something he thought you didn't know. We were in the exercise yard one day.
—It gets better. Wait till you hear this. So Saddam Hussein is the big Western ally, right? We've equipped him, sponsored him, trained him up, right? Fourth biggest army in the world. He thinks he'll steam into Kuwait no prob, right? No way his mates in the West are going to stop him. I mean, Kuwait—not even a fuckin' democracy, right? Just a fuckin' royal family, like ours, owning everything and running the show. And it turns out they've been stealing Iraq's oil.
—Give it a rest, Otto.
—The Kuwaitis, with Western investment, have been drilling for the oil
at a slant
, an angle, starting miles inside their own border but tapping the Iraqi oil reserves. Basic robbery.
—
I've heard of Arabs
, says Nobby, ex-Tank Battalion, biggest thief on the planet, inside for fraud—
who could steal the bedsheets from under your sleeping body . . .
—Yeh, listen, Nobby, cos it gets better. So you all know about the PR firm who sold the war to the American senate? Hill and Knowlton, the biggest fuck-off PR and Marketing outfit in the fucking world, they're funded millions, and I mean millions, by the super-rich Kuwaitis and the oil fat-cats to persuade the American public and the Senate to go to war. They make news videos to make it look like reporting. They sell it like it's a bar of chocolate. They do everything. They even fake a story with a weeping fifteen-year-old girl who says she saw Iraqi soldiers dump three hundred and fourteen babies on the stone-cold floor to make off with the incubators.
—That's old stuff, I say,—we've heard all that.
—
What they do
, says Nobby,—
what they do is get a giant fevver, right, a fevver, and they tickle you while you're sleepin' . . .
—Yeh, but what you haven't heard is this: that girl, that fifteen-year-old girl is a member of the royal family! Her dad is only the ambassador to the United fucking States!
—
They start on the right side of you wiv the fevver, and when you roll over they lift up the sheet on that side . . .
—It gets better. The Senate was persuaded by just five votes, right? That means that if three senators had voted differently, there would have been no Desert Storm and none of us would have gone to war. Now then—
—
Then they nip round the other side of the bed with the fevver and they start working on you from that side . . .
—Forget about all those senators who are invested in the oil business, here's three Democrats for you: one's a Bible Belt Christian and they've got him stitched up with a beautiful Kuwaiti boy; another is having a long-term affair with a Kuwaiti princess, not the one who sobbed about the fake incubators, another one . . .
—S
o then you roll away from the sheet that side . . .
—And your third senator (this is all true, I'm not making this up, no fuckin' need) admits he voted the wrong way because he had a terrible headache that day.
—
And that's it, they fuck off, you wake up hours later with no sheet underneath you. Fucking brilliant, it is . . .
—So that's it then: Yanks go, Brits follow, baaaaaa baaaaa and we're out in the desert heavy breathing depleted uranium.
—What's that then, Otto? I says.
—
One fevver. Brilliant, it is . . .
—What? Depleted uranium? That's another story, mate. But you see what I'm saying? One PR job, two fucks and a headache. So who is the cunts? Eh? Eh? Who?
And when he says this Otto doesn't wink, no, but he pulls one eyelid down with his forefinger and looks at me with one blue eye, and I know who is talking to me. I don't know how long he's been there, sort of inside Otto, but it's him all right. I turn away.
—You all right, Seamus?
—I'm all right, Otto. Catch you later, son.
Otto has a way of trying to look after me. I don't need looking after, but he keeps checking up, see if I'm okay, all that. He tells me about depleted uranium. Tells me what it is. I didn't even know we were using it. Explains the flashes in the desert and the way those Iraqi corpses were all shrunk but their boots weren't burned. That had been bothering me for a long time. But with Otto there's always more. He reckons it can explain the illnesses I've been having these last few years. He reckons there's a lot of American soldiers been making legal claims, but their government isn't wearing it. Same as ours isn't wearing it.
I don't know. I just don't know.
Otto gets out of nick before me. I miss him. He's a good lad. He comes back and visits me once a week. He's got ideas about us starting our own security business after I get out.
But the migraines get worse, the internal pains get worse. When I do finally get paroled out, Otto is there to collect me. Takes me off to a pub called the Sandboy—yeh—for a slap-up lunch and a few pints, so we can talk about this security firm. We're going to call it AV Security to suggest "armoured vehicle" without saying it. We both know it's bollocks—ain't gonna happen. But we get pissed and talk about the nick and pretend like it is.
Out of the blue and after seven pints of flat Courage bitter Otto goes,—Believe in evil, do you, Seamus? Do ya?
—Eh? I notice he can't keep his foot still.
—We got mugged in this last lot, mate. Turned over. Done up the arse.
—Leave it out, Otto.
—Look Seamus, my nerves are shot. Your health is fucked. What for? Makes no sense we were even there.
—Strewth. Supposed to be having a good time, ain't we?
Otto's hands are shaking. He taps the table with his box of ciggies.—Sorry, mate. Drink up. One for the road, eh?
We never talk any more about AV Security. Otto gets a pay-out for his arthritis. He tries to help me with all the forms and paperwork and so on but the doctors seem to think all my complaints are in my head, so I get nothing. Anyway, Otto sinks his money into a toyshop. He says he wants to see happy faces. He offers me a job "dealing with stock." I took one look at his "stock" and realise he's just being kind. Plus I don't see myself lining up boxes of moulded plastic soldiers on a shelf.
After that I slipped. I lived in some odd places. Hostels. Squats. Derelict buildings. Stone me, I even washed up at the Sally Army more than once. And the Arab showed up in these places more than ever before. He told me it was easier in these places for him to get inside someone for a minute or two. I always knew when he was about to take someone over, maybe a fellow inmate at the hostel, maybe the Salvation Army hostel director, maybe some tattooed psycho sharing the squat. A fuzzy grey shadow would appear, like soot everywhere, there's no other way to describe it. Then their faces would go luminous for a moment, just for a passing moment. And the Arab would be there, maybe dropping me the wink, just talking, always talking, like he was trying to teach me things. Tried to teach me Arabic, he did, and older languages. Mathematics. Loads of stuff. I was no good at it. The migraines. Plus there was a particular thing he used to say, every time, every encounter, just to wind me up. I'm sure it was just to wind me up. Taunt me.
The terrible thing is that as I look back over the last few years, I don't know how I've lived. I can't remember most of it. It's a half-life. Sometimes I do wonder if I died that day in the desert. Took my foot off the mine and died, and this is me dragging on my way over. I've no markers, you see. No coordinates. I'm adrift.
I see Otto sometimes. I go to his toyshop and he hands me a few quid, to help me get by. But I wonder if he's dead, too? Died in Desert Storm like I did. It would add up. This is limbo. I don't know. A beer doesn't taste the same. A cigarette doesn't taste the same.
I don't know.
I was a soldier of the Queen. I am a soldier of the Queen. I have wept for myself in the dark.
Strange things happen. You might be standing in the doorway trying to hustle for a drink. I says—I'm trying to get a cup o' tea—and there's this dapper gent, reckons he knows me. Of course he knows me. His face lights and it's the Arab. Puts me in a cab, pays the driver. Takes me to GoPoint. What a place. It's crawling with ones just like the Arab. And there's this lovely girl. Antonia. She gets me writing. She gave me this exercise book to write in. Therapy. But I don't let anyone see what I've written here. Noone gets to see it. There's a good reason. Antonia asks to see it but I say,—No, my darlin'. No.
I keep the exercise book wrapped inside the Arab's red and white
shemagh.
Yes, sometimes I wonder if I am dead, and sometimes I wonder if I'm still in the desert with my toe on the mine. It could happen. I'm well trained. Maybe I've just been there for like twenty-four hours and I'm still waiting for my boys to find me. Like I'm tranced-out but I'm still covering that mine, muscles locked into position, holding down that spring. It could be. It really could be. I'm well-drilled enough to make that happen. And maybe all these things that have gone on since Desert Storm are just things swimming inside my head. It would explain a lot.
So either I'm still alive somewhere with my foot on a mine; or I'm dead and for some reason I can't go over; or a third possibility is that it did all happen and what I'm left with is worse than the other two alternatives.
I think the Queen can answer my question. I think she is probably the only person on Earth who can. If I could find a way to talk to her she would make it all make sense. I'm going down to Buckingham Palace. They can change the guards all they like. I'm going to chain myself to the railings and I'm going to ask the Queen to come down and have a chat.
I want to take my foot off the mine.
It's been too long. I'm tired, even with all my training, I'm tired.
I'm not writing any more. This is the end of my will and testament. I said I keep this wrapped in the
shemagh
. This is not to keep other people out but to keep the Arab in. If anyone ever reads this, the Arab will pass over to them. The Arab told me that.
Not that you can trust the Arab. There's that other thing he's always telling me, though I know he's a liar. He's just out to get a rise from me. Every time. I don't take the bait. Every time I see the Arab I know that at some point he's going to reach with his forefinger to pull the loose flap of skin under his one good eye, and he's going to say:
—Seamus, there was no mine.
He's a liar. That Arab is a liar.
You have to take your foot off the mine at some point. I chose the cellar bar of the Coal Hole near Waterloo Bridge, between the Thames and Strand. I liked this place, if only because William Blake lived and died above it; though in dreadful poverty. I liked William Blake because he saw angels and demons everywhere, too. Some of them were the same ones that I was seeing.
I also liked this pub because the cellar was the nineteenth-century meeting place of the Wolf Club, an actors' den of drunks, orgies and loose women. I don't know why, but I thought it would make a good venue to tell Yasmin the truth. All of it; all the stuff that had been holding me back from her.
Spill the beans, lift the skirt, open the box, shave the cat.
I asked her to wear her black and red cheongsam dress, the one she wore on the night when she wanted me to go back to her place but I ran screaming from the taxi. I thought if I lost her after telling her everything, then I could at least remember her in that dress. I knew I might easily lose her. It had occurred to me that when she became apprised of what a necromancer/nutter/functioning schizophrenic/whatever she'd been playing with she might want to leave in a hurry and without paying the bill. But then again I knew I could lose her any time after that, too. I was committed, come what may.
When we were settled into this old fornicator's den, its cellar creaking, she said, "You seem to have something on your mind tonight."
"Yes, I'm in a strange mood. Drink your wine. I'm going to tell you some stuff about me."
She put her hand on my wrist. "Listen: you don't have to. You don't have to tell me the slightest thing about yourself. No one comes without history. Least of all me."
It was an unexpected tenderness. She was trying to protect me. But I wanted her to know it all, so I began to tell her. I continued to tell her over drinks, and right through dinner. I lifted the stone from above each and every demon. I told her that I'd done things in my youth that had placed me beyond the comfort and shelter of love, and so I had conducted my life in retreat. That my neat suburban existence had been a refuge and my bureaucratic work a hideaway. But I also told her that I have paid a higher price than anyone to know what lies beneath the manicured suburban lawn, and to see what tormenting ghosts are at play behind the commuter's daily newspaper.
"None of this would matter," she said, "if you would just let yourself go with someone."
I answered that by saying that love is a fraudster. A demon with sweet breath. It tricks you into thinking you are unique; that you are the first lovers in the garden. She then said that my trouble is that I think everything is a fraud; that I think life is a con-artist; that I reckon the universe is out to get us.