Akram's War Page 12

  Instead I try to distract him. ‘I met a girl. She reached into her mouth and worked loose a tooth. Then she rolled it between her fingers into a silver ball.’

  He nods, his face slowly contorting into an expression of confusion. He leans back and thinks for what seems like minutes. Finally he says, ‘It’s like plucking a rose without getting spiked.’

  I lean towards him, my foot scraping against the ground.

  He flinches. ‘Don’t be rough with me, lad. ’

  ‘Will you help me find it?’ I ask, getting to my feet.

  ‘If you were a friend I might.’

  ‘I’ve got no money,’ I reply, patting my pockets.

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s not money I’m after.’

  ‘What will it take?’ I say.

  ‘Come sit. Plenty throw coin at me but no one sits and talks.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Tell me about this rose first.’

  ‘As I was telling her my story she fell asleep.’

  The old man sinks back against the brickwork, oblivious to the danger that it might topple over. I notice that his shoes are open at the toes, out of which poke lurid shades of infected pink skin, and I look intently at the fire, the light burning my retinas and dulling my night sight.

  ‘A cyclical story of how our beginnings meet our ends,’ I add.

  ‘In that tooth,’ says the old boy, clasping his knees and leaning forward, ‘she stores her sorrows.’

  I shrug my shoulders again.

  ‘But you, man of war, you will not understand.’

  ‘I have only the knowledge that God has provided me with.’

  The old man coughs violently, his chest jerking inside his coat. As his eyes catch the firelight I see that the cornea of one is ulcerated, its periphery curdled and bloodied. He clears his throat loudly, the sound visceral and urgent, echoing off the brickwork. Finally he spits into the fire and visibly relaxes.

  He says, ‘You’re not one of those Christians, are you, lad?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Savages, Christians. Lure me to a place with hot soup and bedding. I say, baptize me with your force of argument, and they say, beef or minestrone, sir?’ His eyes retreat into their sockets and he knocks back a large gulp of spirits, then repeats his refrain, ‘Arr war.’

  There is a long pause while I look around for my daysack. For a moment, as our eyes lock, his feet scrape hard across the ground. I relax, reading the signal that the ordnance lurks somewhere by his feet.

  As though coming to, he says, no longer bellowing, ‘Tell me more about this rose with a hag’s tooth.’

  ‘Well, not much to say. . .’

  ‘Tell me,’ he says loudly.

  ‘Met her only tonight, so I don’t—’

  ‘Tell me.’ He speaks louder, his voice echoing deep into the tunnel.

  ‘She’s authentic. Truthful.’

  ‘You bed her?’ Without waiting for an answer, the old man nods approvingly. He reaches behind some bricks and pulls out a green daysack, then places it beside my feet next to the fire.

  I stare at it, my heart pounding.

  ‘It’s yours, I believe.’

  I nod.

  ‘I’ve taken a sneaky peek inside.’ Tilting back his head, he laughs uproariously, exposing blackened stumps in the back of his mouth.

  I wait for him to finish. ‘I’m just the delivery man.’

  ‘It’s crammed full of ordnance,’ he says gleefully, his good eye dancing in the firelight.

  ‘Ordnance?’ I say. ‘You ex-military?’

  ‘You going to cave my head in now?’ he says, leaning back on his brick stool.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Everyone thinks I’m mad, but I know what this is.’

  ‘You were right. Armageddon. It’s coming.’

  ‘I told them that,’ he says. ‘I always knew.’ He pauses for thought. ‘But I didn’t see it coming so soon.’

  I reach for the sack, but the old boy pulls it away. ‘I asked you, did you bed her?’

  I stare at him, unsure of what to say.

  ‘And they say I’m mad.’ He shakes his head vigorously. ‘Go back. Return to her warm bed and think on it.’

  12

  ‘You want to finish your story?’

  Lying next to Grace once again, my limbs warm and chin tucked into the duvet, it feels as though I never left. She had half expected me to return. No sooner had I knocked on the door than I heard the pad of soft footsteps and it opened. For a second she looked at me but there was nothing to read on her face, blank, soft. I stepped inside and lowered my daysack to the floor. I’m sure she saw it, but she made no remark. Without a word, I followed her upstairs and undressed. Grace is authentic, as I told the old boy, but not truthful, not entirely. She’s honest only in the sense that she can’t keep a secret. Slipping into bed, I felt her teeth sharply on my shoulder for a moment, and then she turned over and shifted to the far side of the bed.

  From outside there is the occasional cry of a cat or a fox, I cannot tell which, the skirmish of animals competing for food scraps and territory.

  ‘You carry on. I’ll listen in my sleep.’

  ‘Old Hill tower blocks,’ I say. ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘Sometimes, if I close my eyes it burns me up.’

  ‘What does?’ I reach across and touch her brow, warm and sweaty. She brushes me off.

  ‘I have to clench my teeth and wait,’ she says.

  I try again, gently stroking the space between her eyebrows. This time, she doesn’t resist.

  ‘I have to wait for the lights to put out. It’s best then, isn’t it? When the lights put out.’

  ‘Your ceiling, do you ever stare at it?’ It is a complicated pattern of Artex. Sweeps of plaster folded into each other, in waves and shapes resembling seashells. ‘It’s trying to imagine the sea.’

  ‘The sea,’ she confusedly murmurs. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Old Hill tower blocks.’

  ‘That’s right. The lift’s always broke.’

  ‘I was naive and full of myself like most teenagers, and after having known only the confines of the family home, I was now free. For a while I stayed with Maley’s dad, fixed his garden up, seeing that he was no longer able. Didn’t see him often, kept to himself drinking homebrew or he’d be in The Gate Hangs Well. I got day jobs in factories and foundries, lumping timber and casting metal. It was better than shop work, more honest and meagre, and the early rises and hard work toughened me up. Must have been there about six months, had my seventeenth birthday, which we celebrated in the garden with a bottle of wine Mr Male had bought for the occasion. Never had wine before, and he poured it into these dainty little glasses which we sipped slowly all afternoon. He said I could stay as long as I wanted, but also he wished I would leave. For my sake, he said and I admired the honesty of his language. He hadn’t heard from his son and I never spoke of him. Some ways, I was his surrogate.

  ‘Coming back from some factory one day, I saw Bobby and followed him to a house where he let himself in. I felt the burden of knowledge, it felt heavy and worrisome. Strange, but that’s how it seemed at the time. I had valuable information and I wanted to share.’

  ‘That’s kind,’ Grace says without thinking.

  *

  From across the street I had a good view of the three tower blocks opposite. Like a foreboding, my shadow swept before me. When I leant back and squinted, the uppermost floors appeared lost in a mist, giving the impression that up there the rain was thicker. At ground level the grass was deep green as though painted in by a child. The path to the middle tower was bordered with a bed of newly planted yellow daffodils, and sticks and wires protected discrete squares of newly seeded soil. Beyond this the grass was muddy and littered, and small, shaven-headed children, impervious to the damp, pecked about like hens, collecting butt ends into jars.

  The entrance to the middle tower was guarded by a large steel door, like that of a prison
cell. Fixed to the wall beside it was a heavily studded intercom panel. I pushed button number 142 and waited, watching the children observe a Pakistani on the estate, a rare thing then, with an almost threatening fascination.

  The steel door creaked open and slowly a thin old man with a white rabbit in a pushchair eased himself and the buggy out backwards. The rabbit sat upright, its jaws mechanically working on the end of a turnip. Its ears, sensing the sudden change in temperature, twitched and trembled like a leaf. The animal looked up, considered me with round translucent eyes and returned its attention to the vegetable. I caught the door before it could close, and walked into an atrium, its scum-stained tiled walls covered in graffiti, one layer superseding the other. An acrid smell stung my nostrils. Raucous voices issued from somewhere nearby and anonymous footsteps clattered on concrete.

  On the fourteenth floor the door to flat 142 hung open an inch or two. Drums, screaming vocals and a crash of cymbals escaped through the gap. I knocked but there was no response. I pushed it open, and flinched as a greyhound leapt out, then skidded dangerously down the deep concrete stairwell.

  ‘Hello?’ I called, and stepped inside.

  The flat was dark and cold. Faded paisley wallpaper lined the walls, torn and curled in places. The carpet was slippery and had thick concentric stains as though the grime had been trodden in layer by layer. The music stopped.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Adrian stood at the far end of the room next to a window. He was dressed in baggy blue jeans and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. He put out a flat palm and I stopped. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here but if you don’t fuck off right now I’ll set the dog on you.’

  ‘Dog escaped.’ I shrugged.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Went down the stairs.’

  Adrian clamped a hand to his forehead. ‘Oh fuck, someone will nick him.’

  ‘Won’t he know his way back?’

  He laughed suddenly. ‘Only nicked him myself yesterday.’

  ‘I’ve seen that lanky, greasy-haired paedo fucking Paki,’ I said.

  He looked serious again. ‘What fucking paedo Paki?’

  ‘Bobby – remember him? The pound note you never got.’

  ‘Okay.’ He briefly closed his eyes. ‘Don’t go on.’

  ‘I spotted him in this new mosque. You wouldn’t believe it – the man’s a fucking miracle. He levitated! He’s going about like he’s some kind of fucking prophet.’ I paused and raised my eyebrows as though issuing a challenge. ‘And I know where he lives.’

  We left the flat and walked for a while in the drab drizzly silence without speaking. Raindrops were suspended in Adrian’s closely cropped blond hair. His strong broad face was pale and freckled and a thick chin jutted vulnerably. His eyes seemed to scan the horizon and then dart to the side in small movements like those of a rat-catcher in an old movie. He held his shoulders stiffly, and his T-shirt, damp from the rain, outlined the bulge of his pectoral muscles and hung limply over his lean stomach. His hands hung at his sides, clenching into fists and unclenching.

  The high street was nearly deserted. ‘Normally, if I’ve got coin I can’t go past without going in,’ said Adrian, glancing at Ivan’s chip shop. Ivan, visible through the glass frontage, wore a chef’s cap. When not ladling chips into or out of hot oil, he always stood and smiled at every passer-by. He had left the door ajar, and I took a deep luxurious breath of the smell of vinegar, pickled onion and hot chips.

  ‘I’ll just smash that Bobby cunt with whatever.’ Adrian stopped and turned to me. ‘I’ll pretend it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’

  I dug my hands into my pockets. ‘You don’t have to kill him.’

  Adrian exhaled loudly and bit his lower lip, thinking. ‘I was going to enlist in the armed forces.’

  ‘You could just scare him?’

  ‘You know, after renting myself to that greasy Paki. . .’ Adrian’s laughter betrayed his inability to finish the sentence. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know I’m not bashing him just because he’s a Paki. I wouldn’t do that, I’m not like my dad.’

  ‘Army, navy or air force?’ I kicked at a stone, sending it careering into the road.

  ‘I’m not a skinhead. No skinhead amounted to nothing.’

  ‘We’re all a little bit like our fathers,’ I offered.

  ‘Proper army – infantry,’ he said proudly.

  ‘I reckon you’d be good at it.’

  He nodded. ‘I reckon it’s all I’m good for.’

  ‘You get to leave this shithole.’

  ‘Yeah, I got brochures from the job centre: there’s winter training in Norway and jungles in Belize, no pain. . .’ His chin thrust forward. ‘Yeah, I could train myself to feel no pain.’

  ‘I believe that.’

  The high street terminated with a newly sprung-up video rental shop on one corner and an old pub on the other. The wind carried a blue plastic shopping bag in circles around a roundabout, and the road ahead sloped downwards, disappearing into a bend, towards the railway station and beyond to the old walled factories bordering the canal.

  ‘You must be making plenty of coin?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been thrown out.’

  He considered me suspiciously. ‘I thought you Pakis stuck together.’

  ‘I didn’t want to marry no Paki, so I left. My father’s last words were Where will you go?’

  ‘And you came here! You poor cunt. I could see it coming, though. Your dad’s a bit like mine. All mine wanted was a quiet life, earning, spending, his mates and the boozer, but that’s all gone and he blames the Pakis.’

  ‘I went to stay with Maley’s dad for a bit.’

  ‘Anywhere’s better than mine.’

  ‘They’ll send you down for murdering that paedo, unless of course you tell them what he did to you.’

  Adrian looked back towards the towers, and shrugged helplessly. ‘Manslaughter, not murder, still both cowardly things to do.’

  ‘No pain, have that army life instead,’ I urged.

  ‘Fucker.’ He slowly unclenched a fist at his side and nodded to emphasize each word. ‘Something always gets in the fucking way.’

  ‘Come on, right now. Let’s go to the army recruitment office.’

  Adrian shook his head.

  ‘It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have let him.’

  ‘You’re the only person that knows. . .’ His lower jaw trembled and he pointed a finger inches from my eye.

  I took half a step back and gazed up at the grey afternoon sky. It was broiling and darkening, readying for another assault of hard rain. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Adrian stared at a road sign. ‘Did you see that guy with the rabbit, in the pram? That’s Paedo John and the rabbit’s called Fred. He uses it to lure kids back to his flat. Nothing hardcore like, takes pictures and weirdo-old-man shit, and everyone knows, but he’s got coin. If you’re short of a fiver, he’s good for it.’

  I opened my mouth to say sorry again, but nothing came out. I looked at Adrian. He dug his hands into his pockets, his T-shirt flapping around his shoulders. He turned his head to look further into the distance.

  *

  It seems that for Grace, the lights have been put out. The philtrum above her upper lip vibrates loudly and her chest rises and falls in slow exaggerated movements. I don’t suppose she has heard anything I have said, and curiously, it doesn’t seem to matter.

  I picture the ordnance as an X-ray in shades of grey, cylinders of power and a sprig of coiled wire coming from each. The wires connect to a small transparent box, the fuse, which is connected in turn to a cluster of small rectangular nine-volt batteries linked in series to compound the input. The X-ray view shows the inside of the batteries, a dense network of crisscrossing plates.

  I continue to stare at Grace. Nagging at me is the irrational thought that it could blow while we sleep. That would ‘put the lights out’ like she wanted. It’s the best way to die, in your sleep. But it won’t happen, not without detonation,
and the detonator, a mobile phone, sits in the breast pocket of my tunic on the chair. If I squint my eyes I can believe I see its bulging flat surface.

  I close my eyes and picture Adrian as merely an outline in pencil; then, picking up my felt-tip pens, I begin to colour him in.

  *

  Cradley’s own army recruitment office was sandwiched between Café Oregano and a clothes shop I couldn’t see into because every inch of window space had been covered with the word SALE in tall red letters. Adrian and I stood by the door and smiled nervously at each other.

  Adrian took a deep breath. ‘Come on, boy, left, right, left.’

  As we went in, the sergeant major stood up, leant across his desk and stuck out a hand to introduce himself in a thick Scottish accent. Hurrying across the narrow shop, I was first to it. It was warm and soft. He was a bear of a man, with thick glasses on a large ruddy face guarded by a sergeant major’s curly moustache. He wore tight green trousers and polished brown brogues. Over his barrel chest was stretched a thick woollen jumper, and a wide red belt encircled his large girth, a brass buckle shining resplendent at the centre. Sewn onto the left breast of the jumper was a balloon-like para motif, and on the sleeve were three inverted V-shapes with a crown in the indent. On his right breast was a small, discreet enamelled badge bearing the word FALKLANDS.

  ‘H-he’s come to join,’ I stammered, looking between Adrian and the sergeant major.

  Surreptitiously Adrian squeezed my wrist. ‘We’ve both come to join,’ he dug a nail into my skin. It hurt and I felt a trickle of something warm, but I decided I’d take it: no pain.

  The sergeant major ironed a corner of his moustache between two stubby fingers and stared at us. ‘What’s it gonna be, who’s joining?’

  ‘We both are,’ said Adrian quickly.

  ‘Comedians, hey? Take a wee look around ye, see if anything catches yer eye.’ The sergeant major shook his head and sank back into his chair.

  The army recruitment office had once been a video arcade with slot machines lined up against each wall; the owner was a thin fella we called Uncle Stan. I can still picture Stan, counting tall stacks of coins behind a counter where the sergeant major’s desk now sat. I peered closely at the pictures that had replaced the slot machines: a green helicopter firing a missile at a Russian tank; the view through a submarine periscope with hairlines dead centre over a ship on the horizon; a troop of soldiers kitted out like green monsters in nuclear-biological-chemical-protective suits, their rifles held before them with fixed bayonets and behind them a lunar landscape.