Akram's War Page 14

  From the house next door I hear the tinny sound of the dawn azan, today’s first call to prayer, no doubt played, as it is in my parents’ house, from an alarm clock on the mantel. It is barely audible and not something Grace would hear, but at sunrise I am primed for it, often finding myself waking up seconds before it commences, and I hum softly along. Although it is after seven it is still dark outside, the sky heavily clouded.

  A pile of papers is wedged between a microwave oven and the tall refrigerator. Guiltily, I flick through them: Court Summons, Family Proceedings, Adoption Notice, Variation to Contact Order. The earlier correspondence is addressed to a flat in Old Hill tower blocks, and the most recently dated letter states, if I am correct, that the last time she will see her daughter Britney is today, 11 November.

  My eyes are drawn to a newspaper clipping among the stack. It is about six months old, dated in the late spring: Woman Kidnaps Daughter. I read quickly, the article describing how Grace Booth, self-employed, 31, locked herself and her daughter into a social worker’s office and was reported to have said, I’m going to put the lights out unless you give me back my Britney. It goes on: A spokeswoman for the police reported that the child was in grave danger. The newspaper does not mention any sort of weapon. I stop reading, my heart sinking coldly into my bowels.

  Behind me, I hear a shuffle, and there stands Grace with a kitchen knife poised at her throat. Her eyes glare determinedly, the lower eyelids filling with tears, and her mouth is clenched so tightly that it appears as though her jaw will somehow break.

  13

  ‘My people have a saying: A woman is born when she gives birth.’

  Grace stares at me incredulously, the knife tip making a blanched indent in her skin. Soon it will pierce the surface and she will bleed.

  I take slow steps towards her. ‘God love you, Grace, but the problem with you is that you were born with a face that could never quite solve the puzzle.’

  Her mouth trembles and she glares at me silently as though trying to work out what I have just said.

  ‘I know you’ve thought about it. Putting the lights out. For good.’

  A slow trickle of blood leaves the point of the knife, running down the blade.

  ‘But that sort of thing, it’s not for you.’

  The trickle reaches her fingers clasping the knife.

  ‘Some escape, some take revenge, and others, well, they just take it. Sooner or later, they lower their expectations and reach some sort of compromise.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’ As she speaks, the knife slips to within an inch or so below her Adam’s apple. ‘You don’t understand. You can’t compensate for what they take away.’

  ‘No, my love. The compromise is with yourself.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ The knife returns to its earlier position.

  ‘You were asleep, weren’t you? I told you all that stuff and you slept right through it.’

  The knife presses deeper, the trickle of blood growing, branching into two and then three. The blade is dangerously close to her carotid.

  ‘If you were listening you might have heard something. Something that might make you stop.’

  As she shakes her head in confusion, the knife serrates the skin at an angle, drawing tiny pinpricks of blood.

  ‘I knew Britney’s dad. I served with him.’

  She shakes her head more vigorously, her eyes bulging like those of a trapped animal. The blood runs between her fingers. ‘I hardly bloody knew him myself. Said he was serving but they all say that, don’t they? Told him I was expecting and he done a runner.’

  I say, ‘Adrian Hartley. Only Allah knows how I loved that man.’

  The knife drops to the floor and her body starts to shake uncontrollably. I grab a tea towel off the sink and wrap it around her neck, applying pressure. I gently guide her back up to the bedroom, where I make her sit up in bed, her back against the headboard. She is wide awake and I pour her a large drink. She wants to know everything, ‘for Britney’s sake, to tell her when she’s older’. She tells me they were never in love and I can say it how it was. Propped next to her, my arm around her, I begin at the beginning.

  *

  ‘Nature, what makes it different?’ bellowed Training Corporal Longbone.

  I looked across at the open fields and then back at the woods from where we had come. The long route march, the last of week three, had worn me out. My feet, in boots that were not yet broken in, hurt with every step, and the sweat was still running into my eyes as I stood in formation as though ready for inspection. Around me, the men of Recruit Company C, to which Adrian and I belonged, eased their weight painfully from one leg to the other.

  The corporal dug his thumbs into his webbing and paced up and down the line. He was tall, with big shoulders and a strong, boyish face. ‘In nature nothing is straight. Not a blade of grass, not a twig; everything is bent, fucked.’

  He stopped at me and extended a hand to finger the collar of my khaki shirt. ‘In the field nothing is black,’ for a moment his eyes caught mine, ‘or white. Remember it well, in the field it could save your life.’

  Without warning, the corporal threw himself down and began to wrench clumps of long grass out of the ground, stuffing it into his webbing, around his weapon, pack and helmet. He pulled elastic bands out of his pocket and strapped leaves and twigs around his arms and legs. Then, like a tribesman, he smeared black camo, from a lipstick-like device, across his face.

  ‘On my command, close your eyes, count to ten and open them,’ he ordered. ‘No peeking or I’ll have you on a fucking charge. Go.’

  I listened to the light thud of his footsteps as I counted, but after four they were imperceptible. Opening my eyes, I scanned the field, but Longbone was no longer visible. I looked up at the Yorkshire sky, blue and dotted with cotton wool clouds like a child’s painting. One of the other recruits reported movement at nine o’clock but no one else could confirm it.

  Then I heard a brief war cry, and directly ahead of us the corporal sprang to his feet. A haphazard mixture of man and vegetation, he ran towards us – towards me, I felt – his rifle extended before him: ‘Bang. Bang. Bang.’ He stopped and caught his breath.

  ‘That was twenty yards. Machine-gun fire is accurate at over five hundred yards. A sniper could be a mile away.’ He looked around at us. ‘Fall out, buddy up – I want to see you all camo up.’

  ‘I spotted him,’ said Adrian, tucking small branches of heather into the rear of my webbing, ‘at twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘He’s the corporal,’ he said.

  ‘Corporal, sir,’ I said, turning to Longbone. He was sitting on his haunches, about five yards away, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Recruit Khan?’

  ‘Where do we get camo from?’

  He reached into a tunic pocket and pulled out the camo stick, squeezing it in his giant fist. I watched his face change; it softened, almost as though he was about to laugh, and then froze into a stern expression. ‘You serious, Recruit Khan?’

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘Do you think you need it, Recruit Khan?’

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Again I shrugged.

  ‘Shrug your shoulders at me once more and I’ll carve them off you – you fucking Paki.’ He spun the camo stick between his fingers. The entire company had stopped and they stared at me. I looked away, wiping the sweat from my brow.

  The corporal jumped up like a gymnast onto his feet. ‘Listen up!’ he cried in his usual booming voice. ‘Let’s see who was paying attention in class this morning. Does our quota of Paki,’ he coughed, ‘Recruit Akram Khan, does he require camo paint?’

  There was a long silence, broken finally by Adrian’s voice. ‘Corporal, sir, camo not only makes our colour less visible but it breaks up the distinct outline of the human face.’

  The other recruits laughed. The corporal drew on his cigarette, staring at Adrian through narrowed eyes. �
��Recruit Hartley, are you a homo?’

  Adrian said nothing.

  ‘Do you love the arse of another man?’

  There was silence.

  ‘Answer me, Recruit, or I’ll have you on a fucking charge.’

  ‘No, Corporal, sir.’

  ‘I love my wife and I love England. Do you?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal, sir.’

  ‘You love my wife?’ The corporal’s voice rose into a crescendo.

  Adrian opened his mouth. I stared at him, willing him to shut it. ‘No fucking way.’ He looked at me and then again at the corporal, and crouching to tear at a clump of grass in the ground he half whispered, ‘But that Paki, he’d have you.’

  There was a hushed silence and I could hear the wind whistling loudly through the trees. Recruit Company C stood perfectly still and looked expectantly at the corporal. Longbone’s face flushed pink. He dropped the butt of his cigarette, ground it underfoot and then stared at it. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, he said to Adrian, ‘He’d have you, Training Corporal Longbone, sir.’

  He turned to the others and clapped his hands. ‘Okay, not only do we have to look like the field but to blend in we also have to smell like it. Any ideas?’

  As we watched, the corporal’s face contorted in concentration. Then a wet patch grew at his groin and urine splashed below the hem of his combat trousers onto his boots. He smiled. ‘Pissing in numbers, on my command: one, two, three, piss.’

  ‘Dickhead, you’ll get us both killed,’ I muttered. The grass at Adrian’s feet, now wet, glistened deep green. ‘You had no right telling the corporal I’d have him.’ I bristled with anger and fear at what the corporal might do next.

  Adrian, who fought anyone put in front of him, just didn’t get it. ‘You ungrateful Paki.’

  ‘You’ve made it worse.’ I turned away.

  ‘You could have him,’ he said, spinning me around to face him. ‘You could fucking smash him.’

  ‘Do you dare?’ I glanced towards the corporal.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s your fight.’

  ‘If I had to fight. Well, like you say, no pain. But I’d have to believe it would achieve something,’ I said.

  Adrian put a fist up before his face and stared at it, slowly nodding.

  ‘You remember that kid Dax?’ I said. ‘You even beat him up.’

  He nodded guiltily, withdrawing his fist to his side.

  ‘Were you there when they all had him?’ I asked.

  ‘I had detention,’ said Adrian boastfully. ‘Besides, I fight alone.’

  I gazed into the far distance, at a pattern of white streaks in the sky left behind by an aeroplane. ‘I’d fight the corporal if I knew Dax was watching.’

  ‘There was something special about Dax, wasn’t there?’ he continued.

  ‘He let on that he couldn’t cry.’

  ‘I remember now. That was his weak point,’ said Adrian softly.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘That bastard,’ he gestured towards the corporal, who was helping a recruit with his face paint, ‘he’s got a weak point.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Well, that’s helpful,’ I said.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Adrian, ‘if you haven’t discovered any obvious weak point then try the throat. A finger’s width above the bulge of the Adam’s apple. He won’t get up for a day.’

  ‘Forget about it. Like you said, he’s the corporal.’

  ‘Sure, but if you do, think Dax. . . throat, Dax. . . throat, and aim for a finger-width above the Adam’s apple. Throw a wild punch in the air with your left, and for a split second he’ll look up and his throat will be fully extended, and at precisely that moment just fucking smash it – fingers, knuckles, lunge with your teeth if you fucking have to. If you don’t put enough feeling into it then you’ll just wind him and make him angrier and he’ll smash you proper, so get it right first time. You got that?’

  ‘Recruit Khan.’ The corporal stood a couple of yards away. I looked at him, wondering if he had heard the exchange between Adrian and me, and my heart sank. He shook his head and raised his eyebrows. ‘You Pakis, you really are hung like niggers, put it away at once.’

  I put a hand to my wet crotch and looked down. Confused, I looked back up at the corporal. I was about to say that my cock wasn’t out but he turned away, laughing. Suddenly I got it. The joke was about me looking for my cock. They all laughed, even Adrian. I stared at the ground and couldn’t help but laugh too.

  On the corporal’s order, we marched in formation to a nearby field and formed a neat queue outside a small wooden building not unlike a garden shed. Three steps led up to a door on one side and three steps led out of a door on the other. Cut into one wall was a long perspex window. Inside, I could see a small desk with a metal chair either side of it.

  ‘Gas masks,’ instructed the corporal.

  Our gas mask cases hung like a boxy aberration on the outside of our webbing. I reached for mine, slipped it on and tightened the straps. It felt like an imposition, like a great black rubber hand clamping itself across my face. The trick, we had learnt, was to settle into a pattern of slow, controlled breathing. Breathing at rest. It was bearable if you were breathing at rest.

  Briefly opening the hut door, the corporal threw in a grenade-like pellet of CS gas. ‘You’ll enter when you’re commanded to, one at a time. Once inside, you will feel guilty for making the others wait. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal, sir,’ we croaked through the resistance of our gas masks.

  The corporal slipped on his own mask and as he opened the door to go in dense white clouds of gas escaped, caught in the wind and billowed upwards into the atmosphere. Despite the mask, the gas stung my eyes. I tightened the straps as much as I could bear, the rubber digging into my flesh. Longbone took in the first recruit, Binnington. With the thick smoke inside the shed, we could see nothing through the window. After about a minute, the exit door opened and Binnington fell out, throwing himself onto the grass, coughing and screaming. His gas mask dangled off his arm.

  The corporal stepped out of the hut and closed the door behind him, then took off his gas mask and stood over Binnington. ‘Get up, get up now, and stand still with your arms spread out.’

  Binnington continued to roll around on the grass, clutching at his face.

  The corporal shook his head. ‘If you rub it into your eyes you will suffer. Stand up, Recruit Binnington, that’s a fucking order.’

  The corporal turned to us. Behind him, Binnington, foaming at the mouth, staggered to his feet. His face was bright red, his eyes bloodshot and tears streamed out of them. A neat arc of vomit escaped his mouth and met the grass.

  ‘Man up. Remember to stand still with your arms out. Let the wind do the work. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal, sir,’ we collectively replied.

  Longbone took in the next nervous recruit. After about a minute the door opened. Clappison jumped the steps, landing awkwardly on the grass. He got to his feet and ran across the field screaming, his arms held out. The next one went in, and the next. Eventually, as the first recruits in began to recover, sitting on the grass looking thoughtful but relieved, I had the idea that it mightn’t be so bad after all.

  ‘No pain,’ I heard Adrian say as the corporal stood by the door, gesturing for me to go in. He shut the door behind us. Inside, the white smoke was dense, but close up the visibility was surprisingly good and I could see the corporal clearly as we each took a chair. Looking at his watch, he motioned for me to remove my mask. I took a deep breath and, whispering the words ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim’, I prised it off, then put it on the table in front of me.

  ‘Name?’

  The effect of the gas wasn’t immediate. For a few seconds I felt okay. ‘Recruit Akram Khan, Corporal, sir.’

  The CS began to sting my eyes and throat.
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  ‘Number?’

  ‘Two-four-seven-seven-seven-three-one-one.’ The paralysis came in a blunt wave, and suddenly I found it difficult to breathe. My eyes watered and I could feel the white gas forcing its way inside my throat and nose. I coughed, thought about shielding my mouth and eyes with my hands and then thought better of it. ‘Cor-por-al, sir.’

  The corporal sank back in his chair and looked again at his watch. ‘Tell me a joke,’ he said.

  I was conscious of his eyes staring at me through his gas mask, cold and determined. The gas seemed to have blocked my throat and although I tried, no words would come out. My mind scrambled to think of a joke. I thought I might pass out or collapse; the overwhelming sensation was of burning from the inside out, and suddenly I was afraid I would die. I reached for my mask and tried to get to my feet. I felt the corporal’s thick hands clamp over mine.

  ‘Tell me a fucking joke,’ he repeated slowly.

  I screwed my eyes tightly shut but the gas seemed to be inside, between the lens and the eyelid, burning at my eyeballs, and closing them made it worse. ‘Knock, knock,’ I said and then coughed, letting more of the gas into my lungs. My chest was on fire and heavy as though weighing me down.

  ‘Tell me a joke.’

  I thought, this is where I will die.

  Suddenly I felt the corporal’s heavy hands grab the straps at the rear of my webbing. Opening the hut door, he flung me out.

  *

  On Friday evenings and taxicabs queue patiently, far into the distance, along the long broad streets that made up the perimeter of Catterick Garrison.

  ‘It’s cheaper by bus,’ I said.

  ‘We’re earning, aren’t we?’ said Adrian.

  We nodded at the guard at the gatehouse and exited onto the street.

  In our first week we had been issued with a bank card, and I had been to a cash machine at the Navy, Army and Air Force Institute and looked up my balance. It was hard to believe that for this, boys messing around, the army was paying money into an account in my name.