The Illuminations (6 page)

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.

‘Army curry,’ Luke said, nudging his plate.

‘You have to taste the real McCoy. You have to go to Calcutta.’

‘Don’t sweat it, Major,’ Luke said. ‘We’re going to get this job done and then we’re out of here.’ Scullion gripped his shoulder and Luke imagined he was talking to all the boys.

‘It’s a great operation this, Captain Campbell. A brilliant thing to be doing. I just feel upset.’

‘Come on, sir. We’re the Western Fusiliers.’

‘I’m the son of a barman, Luke. Believe me. The sons of barmen have taken over the world.’

OQAB TSUKA

Private Dooley was rolling a cigarette at the back of the hall, a breeze-block community centre in Maiwand. The hall was packed and after a while Luke sat in the row beside him. In front a staff sergeant with the new Royal Caledonians was gassing about Scullion and the regiment. ‘And this major’s a total fucking mentalist,’ he said.

‘What’s mental about him?’ asked the lance corporal beside him.

‘Brutal cunt, Mark. He’s about forty-eight. He fought in every fucking battle you can think of since the Falklands. Bosnia, the lot. I’m talking about Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone.’

People change, thought Luke. The world changes. Maybe he’s just not the person he was any more. Maybe he’s sick. He thought carefully as he listened to the Scottish men. Just as likely it’s me that’s sick. It’s me that can’t stand the pace. The major is probably as committed as he ever was and it’s me that’s changed my mind. Every soldier has his ups and downs, don’t they? Every soldier. Maybe Scullion’s just going through a bad
patch in his personal life, like he said, and it’s nothing more, except in your own head, Luke.

‘Iraq? He fought in Iraq?’ asked Mark.

‘Obviously. He was a big man in Basra. Is that when you joined up?’

‘Aye. In 2003.’

‘Right. Well: Scullion. Jesus fuck. He would lift a bazooka to swat a fly.’

‘Cool,’ Mark said. ‘You’ve got to have your team.’ Luke thought there was something familiar about the young lance corporal, but he didn’t say anything and just listened.

‘Aye, well. Scullion certainly knows his team. And he gave the IRA a right shoeing as well. A brutal cunt is what they say. Republicans, Republican Guard: he wiped half of them before they could even get their sandshoes on. Did the whole thing on expensive whisky and a raging fucken hard-on for modern warfare. Knows everything. Goes into battle with a book in his hand. A brainbox. Like Tim Collins, man. I’m talking supersoldier and I’m not kidding on. Goes hard. Could melt a platoon without trying. Half of the pikeys in here would surrender to his fucken verbals alone.’

‘Easy, boys,’ Luke said from behind.

‘What the fuck …’

‘Shut yer cake-hole. Captain Campbell here. Yer in mixed company, boys.’ The lance corporal turned when he heard the Scottish accent, but then he put his eyes front.

‘You tell them, sir,’ said Private Lennox, squeezing into the back row and stealing the captain’s roll-up from behind his ear. ‘Fucken Aquafresh sitting there. A tube wi’ three stripes.’ Dooley said it loud enough for the staff sergeant to hear.

‘That’s enough,’ Luke said. They all enjoyed a bit of
inter-regimental strife, but he wanted to get back in focus.

There was a lot of noise in the hall and every soldier was hungry to get past the mountains and do some damage. Dooley, Flannigan and Lennox kept close to the captain, but he wasn’t paying much attention to them. He was busy waiting for Scullion to come through the door, looking for signs that the major was under control.

When Scullion came in Luke saw Rashid behind him. Jamal Rashid was a good soldier in the Afghan army, a captain in fact, and he had emerged during training at Camp Bastion as a future military leader and an effective speaker of English. He had an eyepatch and it made him seem very distinguished to Scullion. The Afghan captain was a one-man justification for the surge: ‘Look,’ they said, ‘look at him; in ten years’ time the country will be filled with Rashids.’

He was always with Scullion that summer and it sometimes appeared that Scullion’s last great push was to show Rashid the old arts. Only Luke knew how tough that must have been. Scullion had scars in places nobody would ever see and he wasn’t sleeping. He was falling apart. Looking from the back row, the captain remembered a night two years before, a night he spent with the major and a bottle of Bushmills. Scullion had spoken of a terrible thing that had happened in Bosnia. A squaddie had his face torn off by a sniper in Vitez in 1993, right next to the major, who had been friends with the young man. But all that stuff had taken its toll. Luke remembered how the major loved the old ballads and said his mother had sung them at lock-ins in Mullingar.

Scullion had persuaded himself, just about, that creating electricity and irrigating the warlords’ poppy fields was a better idea than blasting the population from its caves. In his heart, Scullion
felt the Afghans had been destroyed by corruption, by keeping faith with sociopaths and fascists. He agreed with those who spoke of an international caliphate, an order of terror, and, in his militant dreams, he believed such murderers might eventually be bombed into civilisation. This was the war. Scullion felt that bomb strikes and ground troops were the only way because these people didn’t respect talks. What they liked was to cut people’s heads off live on the Internet. What they liked was to cut out the enemy’s liver and eat it. He often said this, but he said many things and now he was trying irrigation.