This Is Not Forgiveness (6 page)

We cut across the park. Groups of kids are gathering in circles. The ones who are too young to get into the pubs. They are passing round bottles of cider, WKD, Breezers, cans of Carlsberg, anything they’ve managed to get their hands on. We walk past, chatting about when we used to do that. I had the same feeling then. Excited to be out. Anticipation. The feeling that anything could happen.
This
time, it just might. It might just be the perfect night.

Along the High Street, gangs of girls walk together, strung in lines across the pavements, arms linked, high heels clicking, in a uniform of tight tops, short skirts, bare shoulders, bare legs, bare midriffs spray-tanned the colour of caramel. Boys swagger in tight groups, eyeing the girls and each other. T-shirts, polo shirts, short-sleeved checks, make of jeans, how they are worn, sneakers, basketball boots, trainers, all mean something, mark them as belonging to one tribe or another. The students have all gone home for the summer. It’s our town now. Bouncers stand outside the pubs, legs apart, necks bulging, sweating in their black, muttering into their head sets, adjusting their mirror shades.

We are standing outside one of the cool bars. It used to be the Rose and Crown but now it’s called MoJo and has a cocktail menu on every table and big squashy sofas, as opposed to one of the vertical drinking sheds that Cal favours, with offers on all the drinks, big screens and loud music and no one looking too closely at the fake ID.

‘There’s a queue,’ Cal objects. ‘We’ll never get in. There’s bound to be a dress code and we’re wearing jeans and T-shirts. Anyway, that kind of place, they won’t let anyone in underage. Our cards will never fool them.’

The bouncers are a cut above the average. Sharp suits and designer shades. Not fat like most of them, but definitely powerful. There’s a woman with them, checking names for the VIP area. Bad sign indeed.

‘Yeah, yeah. We’ll get in. Just chill.’

I’m by no means certain, but I’ve just seen Caro go in with that Art teacher guy. So much for that being over. I’m beginning to wonder about Lee as a source of information. The woman with the list waves them in, no problem. I’ve been on the hunt for her all evening and I’m not about to give up now I’ve seen her. I drag Cal into the queue.

My confidence wanes the nearer to the front we get. Most of the other people are older than us, and not so casually dressed. The doormen are already assessing with their eyes, looking along the line, deciding who’ll get in and who won’t make it. I’m pretty sure we come into the latter category. The lady with the list doesn’t even look at us. We are beneath her notice. Her smile and her, ‘Hi! Nice to see you!’ switch on and off automatically, alternating with a snotty, ‘Your name’s not here. So sorry.’

Cal’s getting restive.

‘We’re wasting valuable drinking time, man!’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘I said I’d meet Sophie later
. . .
’

So much for the lads’ night out.

‘We’re near the front,’ I say, reluctant to give in and lose face, having to slink off with everyone staring and knowing why, quite apart from losing my chance with Caro, that’s if I ever
had
a chance, which when I really think about it, isn’t very likely
. . .

Cal’s phone goes. A message from Sophie. He looks at it, frowning, apprehensive, as if it could bite him, as if she’s looking at him straight out of the screen.

‘It’s Soph.’ As if I need telling. ‘Gotta go, man.’ He peels off from the queue. ‘Are you coming, or what?’

I shrug. I don’t want to spend the night being ignored by Sophie and her crew. Cal looks at his phone. Another message coming in.

‘Gotta go, man!’ he says again. ‘She’s in the King’s.’ He’s off at a trot. ‘See you later!’

I’m just about to follow, when I hear, ‘Hey, Jimbo! Wait up!’

It’s Rob. Nobody else calls me Jimbo. If I object to that, he calls me Jim. I don’t like that either, but he doesn’t take any notice. ‘It’s your name, man. What am I supposed to call you?’ When I say James, or Jamie, he cracks up laughing and says, ‘I’m not calling you that! It’d mean my brother is a poncy middle-class twat.’

He’s with his mates. They are marked out as Army by the short hair and the way they are built. They make everyone else look puny, even the guys who work out. Bronzed from their last tour. Biceps bulging, tattoos showing, shirts open and flapping, exposing their rock solid six-packs. Rob’s not Army any more but he still has mates in and he drinks with them when they come into town.

‘All on your own?’

‘Cal’s left.’ I say. My eyes flick up the line to the bouncers. ‘He was worried that we won’t get in.’

‘’Course you will.’ Rob pulls me to him, his arm on my shoulder. ‘I want to buy a drink for my little brother. You come with me.’

The doormen are ex-Army. One nod and we are in. Just like that. Rob’s good-looking and can be charming when he wants to be. His smile is wide and the bullet-graze scar on his cheek dints in like a dimple. The woman with the list is unable to resist that smile and the faraway, pale blue eyes focusing down on her. We’re not just in, we’re VIP.

There’s no one I know, so I stick with Rob and his mates, all the time keeping watch on Caro. She’s with the Art teacher guy and his friends. They’ve got a whole corner, sitting on a horseshoe of sofas round a big table, drinking wine. They are all much older than her. Teachers of the less boring kind. People with jobs in things like design and consultancy. They are talking loud. Fancying themselves. He’s perched on the arm of a sofa, like a king talking to his court. He’s ignoring her and she looks bored. I’m wondering how to get to her, when Rob gives me a pint.

‘Here you go.’

Rob’s glass is already two thirds empty. Someone hands him a shot and he downs it with a quick grimace and a shake of the head. His mates keep the rounds coming. Security are sending them over, too. It’s not pity. It’s recognition of what happened to him. What he was like out in Afghan. He’s a bit of a hero.

‘Drink it!’ he says to me. ‘Don’t sip it! You’ll get behind.’ I take a couple of gulps.

He’s looking round, eyes never still, assessing: ways in, ways out, who’s here: male, female, type, age, dress, distribution about the room. He notices everything. It’s like he’s still looking for assassins. He’s jumpy. Nervous. His good leg won’t keep still. The fingers on his left hand drum against his thigh, keeping his own time, faster, more frenetic than the music being played by the DJ. He needs drink to relax and he needs a lot of it. He stops doing the whole room and concentrates on the women. His eyes flick from group to group. Girls on a night out; girls just with a friend sharing a bottle of wine, girls in mixed groups, girls with their boyfriends. He whispers comments in my ear, assessing availability, physical attributes. I have to be careful not to spray my drink everywhere. Definitely funny but not PC.

‘There’s a lot of posh crumpet in here tonight. Anyone you fancy, young
Jamie
?’ He drains his pint. ‘I prefer slappers myself. Less trouble.’

He used to have a girlfriend, Sonia, they were going to get engaged, but she dumped him after he came back. So much for tie a yellow ribbon and stand by your man. The experience may have coloured his feelings towards women.

‘What about her?’ He’s pointing at Caro. ‘Do you fancy that?’

‘Might do.’ I take a drink.

‘Thought so. You’ve been eyeballing her non-stop. What are you going to do about it?’

I shrug again.

‘If you won’t, I will.’

He makes to go over. I catch his arm.

‘No, Rob! She’s
with
people?’

‘So?’ He turns to look at me, eyes mixed with pity and puzzlement. ‘She is not with
people
. How many times do I have to tell you? She’s with a bunch of
arseholes
! There’s no point in standing here crying into your pint. You got to strike, little bro, or you won’t get any.’

He’s gone before I can stop him. I watch as he leans over and whispers something to her. She looks up and smiles. He says something else and she laughs. He jerks his head in my direction and she looks at me. I give a wave, feeling really stupid. I don’t know what he’s said, but it looks like she might come over. That’s when the Art guy gets involved. He steps in front of Caro and squares up. I guess he expects Rob to back down, he’s a big guy and Rob’s quite a bit shorter, but that is not going to happen. Rob steps up to him, fists closed, arms corded. His head goes back, just a fraction. I know what he’s going to do. My eyes close in sympathetic reflex action. I’m expecting to hear the crunch of cartilage, hear the guttural howl through a throat thick with bubbling blood. But that is not what happens. Caro pushes Rob back with the flat of her hand. She gets the Art guy away. She handles it. It’s as if she has guys fighting over her every day.

The friends move with them. The place they left is immediately filled by another group. Rob doesn’t come back to me. I lose track of him temporarily as I finish my drink. Bryn, one of his mates, hands me another so I chat to him for a bit.

I’ve met him before. Him and Rob were in the same platoon. He’s Welsh. Tall and dark, deeply tanned from his recent tour. His hair is so short that his scalp shows white under the changing lights; the black bristling cut glistening with sweat and gel. He has calm brown eyes. He looks tough but kind. He’s just been made sergeant and I can see why. He was Rob’s best mate when he was ‘in’. Looked after him. He’s a sniper. They all are. He was Rob’s Number Two, his spotter, finding targets, checking things like range and wind direction, covering his arse. They worked together, close as brothers. He crosses his arms and I see the sniper’s tattoo, a pair of crossed rifles with an ‘S’ above it, that he has on his upper arm. Rob’s is on his thigh.

Bryn’s just come back from a tour in Helmund.

When I ask how it was, he just says, ‘Hot. Yeah. It was hot there.’

He won’t talk to me about it. There’s no point because I won’t understand. Only they know what it’s like to be out there. They have their own language. They talk to each other in special terms and acronyms: L69s, SA80s, sangars, HESCOs and GMGs, VSPs, IEDs and FOBs. He won’t talk to me about it unless I ask specific questions and I know not to ask.

He’s older than the others. He talks about his leave, coming home to the wife and kids. He couldn’t wait, counting down the weeks, then days, then hours, but he’s already had enough. He wants to be back there, I can see it in his eyes. He wants to be back in the desert heat, laying up on a roof somewhere under the flutter of a camouflage net, looking down his L69 ‘long’ through his SIMRAD night sights, going out in the LAV, checking things out through his NVGs, or whatever it is they do there. He loves it and hates it. They all do. That’s why they get pissed and kick off. Trying to get that adrenalin rush, trying to generate some excitement.

‘Your dad was in, wasn’t he?’ he says to me.

‘Yeah, my grandpa, too. We’re a military family.’

‘Ever think about joining yourself?’

‘Nah,’ I shake my head. ‘It’s not for me.’

‘What do you want to do, then?’ he asks as he buys me another pint.

‘Doctor,’ I say, although that’s not me, that’s Martha. I haven’t got a clue what I want to do.

‘You can be a doctor. They’ll pay for your education. Training. Everything.’

‘Yeah, I know. But I don’t want to.’

I want to add, ‘Look what happened to Rob’
,
but I don’t. It’s not the right thing to say. He picks it up, anyway. The words unspoken.

‘Shit happens,’ he says quietly. ‘I miss him. We all do. He was the best. Top kill tally in the unit. Three tours and hardly a nick. Goes out on routine patrol and boom
. . .
’ He sighed. ‘You need eyes in your arse out there. Lose concentration. Just once and
. . .
’ He shook his head. ‘Could happen to any of us. How’s the boy doing? Seems all right.’

His laugh is a deep rumble in his throat. We look over to where Rob is chatting to some bird.

‘Umm,’ I take a pull on my pint. ‘That’s just tonight.’

‘Having trouble, is he?’ He looks at me, suddenly serious. Soldiers will make a joke out of almost everything but he really cares about Rob. I can see it in his eyes. ‘Having a problem settling back in, like?’

I nod. He’s guessed right.

‘He’s best off out of it, you know.’

‘That’s not how he sees it. He loved it. It was his life.’

‘Still best off out of it. It was getting to him. He was getting obsessive. Going out on little ops of his own, settling scores, strictly against orders, of course. It doesn’t do to get involved like that. It doesn’t do to forget that the target is a human being.’

‘He’s been talking about going back. Says there are ways, but I didn’t think he could. You know, with his leg.’

‘He don’t mean Army. He could sign up with one of the private outfits.’

‘You mean mercenaries?’

He laughs. ‘“Private Security Services” is what they call them.’

‘But what about
. . .
’

‘His injuries? That don’t matter. He’s got special skills has your brother. All they got to do is get him in and get him out. He just has to hit the target. He don’t have to put up with the rest of the bollocks.’