revved-up hairdo, and the amplified whine winds them all in. We’re
boy-racers, us, the Butcher thinks, powering towards the next
century – the enemy’s out there, but we don’t know who he is any
more … – This feller in Texas, ‘spect he were a bit of a nutter – but
they didn’t have to send in them Swat teams an’ whatever, an’
machine-gun ’em all to death – kiddies, too. No, it should make yer
think – there’re all sorts in the world, so what’s so funny about
peace, love an’ understanding? What indeed, the Butcher silently
cavils. Problem is they’re all in short supply. He wonders what
would happen if the emsee turned his/her fissured and glittery
cheek to those Chester ranchers? There’s a great big worldful of war,
hate and incomprehension between wolves such as them, hunting
down nerve-gas precursors for brutal dictators to use on their own
flock, and these dipped sheep, who’re standing about wiping the
fungicide from their eyes with bar towels … (Wo Regenten wohl
regieren, Butch.) Kann man Ruh und Friede spüren, Squills …
The Butcher turns to Gawain, who stands slope-shouldered, head
hanging, his sweat-soaked shirt a red rag on a knackered bull. He
examines the cavalryman’s superb musculature – the Chobham
armouring of his broad chest and the steely linkages of his sinewy
arms. He considers the vast amount of tax payers’ money which
has been expended bringing this young man to a peak of physical
perfection, and filling his head with tactics and stratagems. Yet
here he is, waiting and waiting … for the next Kuwait, whereas the
Butcher – whose business is, after all, target acquisition – well, what
am I waiting for? Soon after, the club shuts, and the emsee drives
them all into the street with: This may be paradise, my little angels,
but you can’t stay here fer eternity! The punters gather together for a
few minutes, pairing off, swapping phone numbers, and speculating
as to where another drink or drug can be found – then they scatter.
Gawain staggers, and the Butcher supports him: a heavy weight on
my shoulders. The junior officer’s right out of it now – way out at the
end of the galaxy’s spiral arm, and babbling thoughtless bubbles:
Light colours … in the tepee … Daddy said … hang it from the
ridgepole … ups-a-daisy … (EmKayUltra should’ve known about
this little cocktail, eh, Butchie?) Possibly, Squillster – however,
as we know only too well, the problem with truth serums is that,
while they may innoculate against perfidy, the product itself is
often – (Well past its sell-by date?) I was going to say, decidedly
off. Materialising underneath the arches, opposite the Ritz on
Whitworth Street, the Butcher remembers watching live footage of
target acquisitions at Langley, one of the shows the Agency likes to
put on to impress their friends: the camera-eye, zooming through
cirrus shreds to trap a racing technical in its cross-hairs – a vehicle
which, no matter how fast it travels, can’t replace the fear – or the
thrill of the chase … He slides his hand down Gawain’s chinos and
into the sweaty groove between his buttocks – the cavalryman
whinnies … Next they’re grazing on each other’s faces in filthy
meadowland on the crumbling bank of the Bridgewater Canal …
where have we been? Dawn has come – a fireball exploding over
the Manchester Riviera, and diesel-powered ducks leave detergent
wakes as beer cans bob-bob-bob about in the … Boddingtons. Dawn
has come – its rays lasering down to etch this precise and frozen
image: a slim, dark man in anonymous clothing lying on top of
a bigger blond man who’s half naked, his washed-out, paisley-patterned
boxers pulled down to expose his … boneless rump roast.
The Butcher yanks them down further – then, pushed to the limit,
he rises up, drags down his zip and unleashes … Squilly! who sniffs
the fresh morning and the stale canal, then quests towards his
quarry. This time the Butcher leaves a deep thumbprint in the
little tin of Vaseline – he briefly considers the box of condoms he
pocketed at the Britannia, but realistically what’re the chances?
Gawain is undoubtedly one of us, but the Butcher is a past master of
such tradecraft and intuits Gawain has never, ever gone beyond
prep-school circle jerks – why, despite the lateness of this early hour,
his handkerchief is still perfectly aligned in his breast pocket, so
all the world can see … just how fucking straight he is. No, no – this
is a faggot who’s never been ignited, who’s got his jollies up until
now on the playing field – the Butcher kneels to feed the ball in,
hearing twenty-year-old changing room jibes: Woolly-woofter!
Fucking poofter! and feeling Mister Marshall’s wedding ring snag on
his waistband as the Deputy Headmaster checks to see if De’Ath
Major is wearing underpants under his rugby shorts, in direct
contravention of the school rules. Coaxing Squilly into full and
majestic turgidity, the Butcher takes a moment to ruminate bitterly
on the legalistic fig leaves with which paedophiles mask their
proclivities … Hold! before uttering a small prayer of his own
devising: Soon to be dearly beloved, I do hope your back passage
is … uncluttered. Hold! The world strains all around him – he feels
the undergrowth writhe, every blade of grass is neon-edged, thistledown
floats through his yawning eyes – eyes that see not this
colossal incongruity: two of Her Majesty’s upstanding servants
lying on a canal towpath preparatory to performing a sodomitical
act – but … Kins! Specifically, his father’s bloodhound visage,
its heavy jowls and lacrymal bags. Poor Kins! He too has been a
smoker … a joker … a midnight toker – he, too, has been nailed
up on the cross of a forbidden love. Kins, at Colindale Avenue,
standing by the French windows, peering out at the lawn-shaped
patch of mud, sown with hoppers and choppers … deflated and
rusting. Kins, who, his eldest son acknowledges for the first time,
I’m alike, in this respect at least: both of them, whatever they may
say or do, are fated to remain homeless, especially when we’re
at home … Hold! Gawain groans, perhaps anticipating the bite of
the Green Knight’s axe-blade … Hold! a dying fish up-plips in the
moribund canal … Hold! And –. Diddle-ooh-doo, diddle-ooh-doo,
diddle-ooh-doo-doo! The throb in his pocket is insistent –
more insistent yet than Squilly (What the fuck, Butch?). He
fumbles the Nokia from his pocket and squints at the tiny screen:
number witheld. Indeed … all their numbers are withheld – they’re
very withholding people … Hold! The Butcher hits the necessary
button and the ooh-dooing diddles away … he rubs the glob of
Vaseline expertly into and around Gawain’s anus … and Engage!
The scrum-half feeds the ball in so fast Gawain curses Trooper
Pythian – F-F-Fucking dickhead! – who, as ever, hasn’t sufficiently
engaged with the front row. As his
arm slips from the Pythian’s
sweaty hips, Gawain braces his shoulder against the Lock’s
buttocks … taking up the strain in this push-of-war. The patch
of cratered mud bucks and heaves before his own fanatic face –
boots scythe into view, steel studs scrape on shanks and shin
pads. Cartilage grinds against bone – behind him Tizer grunts,
Steady, lads … steady, as the thirty-two-legged creature we’ve
become crab-walks across the sodden ground. Gawain hears the
seagulls … our biggest fans flapping about the touchline, while
into his shoulder pumps all the tension in Pythian’s buttocks and
haunches – together with all the pushing and pulling of interlinked
arms, the thrusting of legs, the … butting of heads. Steady, lads,
steady … Beyond the wheeling scrum range the loosening line of
backs, each man, Gawain thinks, vitally connected to me by eyeline
and anticipation … Steady, lads, steady … The SeeEssEmm is
killing his hangover with a sneaky can of Tennent’s behind the
home goal posts – he, too, is vitally connected to Gawain by the
chain of command, the links of which join all the men on the establishment
– gunners and tankers, Yorkies and Scotties, Queue-men
and blanket-stackers – into one enormous dutiful and purposive
creature that longs only to serve … A creature which is itself only a
part of a still greater body of men … Steady, lads, steady … the ball
flips back – Gawain slips, knee-knocking it forward into the melee.
Fuckinell, Greeny, Tizer grunts – but without malice … At the
Academy, five weeks in and fitter than he’d ever been, what with
daily log-runs and increasingly frequent bad-boy badge parades,
Gawain was legless with fatigue. Slumped in a War Studies lecture,
drowsing fitfully while a tweedy-old pipe-puffer droned on, he’d
had this epiphany: I belong – I truly belong. Each beat of Her
Majesty’s loyal heart pumped life through mysterious constitutional
mechanisms into the grey matter of Her Government – which in
turn animates all of us: a hundred thousand highly trained bodies,
knitted together by our instinctual drive to fight! It was this he’d
been fleeing to from … the Welsh desert. This he’d yearned for on
the sodden afternoons of his childhood when he wandered the
sodding lanes around Nantyfynn: a family that was, above all, functional
– while as for the other thing, the breaking free from your
lies, you’re so self-satisfied … well, he didn’t need it – didn’t need
the fauny figures in their slinky green leotards hefting him aloft to
the camp tootling of their massed synthetic horns. Although, aged
eleven, hunched up with his siblings on Missus Price’s parlour couch
to watch Top of the Pops, he’d feared he might explode with excitement.
– Go, Greeny! Go, you fucking bell-end! The ball – hooked
back to Tizer, knocked back again by him – lies at Gawain’s feet,
its voluptuous form so huggable. He boots it forward, eccentrically
oscillating – and, breaking from the scrum, catches it on the fly! He
scopes out the killing zone between him and the touchline: the
Welsher’s full-back, together with the rest of his brick, are spread
out between Gawain and the touchline. On the range there’s a catch
in the Rarden’s throat before it begins to hammer out thirty-mil’
rounds. On the hoof, Gawain hesitates for a moment, calculating
his trajectory – then, roaring, he begins a charge that ends … in
the changing room: Nice one, Greeny … Blinder, Greens – fucking
slotted those Taffies, didn’t we … Christ, we’re pure. Awaaay,
away away awaaaay! We are the sheep-men – we are the Fighting
Rams! Gawain joins in with the pink and steaming choristers: No
ifs no butts, we’re the Rams! Baaa-baaa-baaaa! Ha-haa-haaa! Alll-right,
Greeny – room for one more on top! Don’t bend over for the
soap, boys … ! Agitated by muddy rivulets snaking across the white
tiling, a single, wiry questioning pubic hair interrogates him: What
are you, Lieutenant Thomas? And, as he rubs the suds around his
cock and balls, Gawain wonders, Will the harshing ever cease?
Back at the regimental lines, flushed by his rubdown, exhilarated
by their victory, he runs into Blakey, who sniffs self-importantly:
Gawain, this briefing this afternoon … Turns out it isn’t just
normal slime – SeeOh wants full opsec, dry run. We’ve the real
McCoy coming up from London. – Meaning? – For fuck’s sake,
Gawain, what an utterly bone question … Captain Blake’s pinched,
white face darkens, why’s he always so bloody angry? – As my Two-EyeSee,
I need you to be a little bit more on the actual ball – not
just the rugger one. Rumour is we’ll get our movement order any
day now. Taffies still here? Gawain grins: They’re in the canteen,
Phil, hoovering it up – prob’ly not a lot of scran back in Taffy land.
– Well, you’d know all about that, Lieutenant Thomas – anyway,
chivvy ’em along now, get ’em off our patch. I want everyone in the
briefing room by fourteen-thirty, okay? No excuses – no bullshit:
everyone. Captain Blake swivels neatly on his heels and stamps
away. It’s a clear, sharp Saturday afternoon in early October and the
wind is stripping the leaves from the trees. There’re kids mucking
about in the playground behind the married personnel’s accommodation
facings which wouldn’t look out of place on any council estate, on
the outskirts of any British town. Gawain pictures Fiona sitting
inside one of them – sitting knitting, a Moses basket by her side.
He hears her needles ticking away, smells the furniture polish and
sees the future ahead: years will rotate – nothing will change …
He calls after the stiff, retreating back: I think Pisspot and the
SeeEssEmm were out on the lash last night, Phil … Stiff back
turns to soft belly and Captain Blake scowls: I don’t give a ruddy
fuck about that, Gawain. In less than a week we may well be under
fire from some Serb scum who haven’t troubled to wade through all
thirty-two pages of Unprofor’s rules of engagement – our blokes
need to be completely clued-in. So see to it, Gawain – that’s an
order. He does his habitual finger-fidget, intended to solicit the
salute which Gawain grudgingly sketches – then turns away again.
Noting the forty fucking Walnut Whips on each of his SeeOh’s hips,
Gawain thinks, He won’t pass the physical if he doesn’t put a sock
in it … – Oooh, yeah! Boo-yaa! Greeny! Greeny! The cries go up
from the men seated either side of the long Formica-topped table as
Gawain bashes through the swing doors – it isn’t the first time he’s
scored the winning try, but this is a different sort of victory: he feels
held, embraced, by my brothers in arms … a t’riffic relief, given that
ever since he joined the regiment Gawain has struggled with …
distance. At the Academy, together with the rest of his peers, he’d
cheerfully ignored the smal
l mauve-jacketed book which had been
left on top of his bed-block: Serve to Lead, eh … Okay, agreed, he’d
flicked through, pausing to read the odd fragment: Success in battle
really comes from a combination of the skill and daring of the leader and
the skill and confidence of the led, and we, the British … He was open-hearted,
manly, friendly, and independent, a most gallant and zealous
officer, and much devoted to his own corps … then chucked it aside –
after all, this was the sort of guff he’d heard since childhood from
his own father. Heard it right up until Derek Thomas left the army
and went postal … But on the morning Gawain first strode out on
to the parade square, and saw H Company lined up before him –
thirty lairy young men, their wary eyes frisking the nig Rupert to
see if he’d anything to hide – he’d had a mad urge to rip the pips
from his shoulders, cast his peaked cap aside and throw myself among
them. Because that’s you all over, isn’t it, he admonishes himself as
he takes his place on the bench, between Pythian and one of the
Welshers … you pathetic little poofter – you’ll do anything, repeat
ANYTHING, it takes to be one of the boys. And, just as at the
Academy, where he’d floundered at first to make my mark, so he’d
realised his future with the Hussars would have to be cemented
in the churned-up mud of the rugby pitch. Better he should be
known as a fully fledged rugger-bugger than the other sort. Better
he should assume the habit of command than hearken to his finer
feelings. But it remains difficult – damnably difficult. It’s entirely
possible, he supposes, for a man to be as hard as nails and as bent
as a nine-bob note – his curse is to be not exactly a gentleman, but
very definitely a gentle one … and, seeing some seventeen-year-old
Geordie holding back the tears, Gawain still longs to put an
arm around his shaking shoulders, bestow a kiss on his spotty
forehead. Objects in the mirror may appear larger … which is why
it’s so damnably difficult to keep my distance. Then again – there
were tales enough of unbending Ruperts, who bore down on their
men with all the weight of their entitlement, so were subjected to
creepy mind-fuck: brews adulterated with salt, whispering campaigns
during briefings, salutes so sketchy as to merely suggest what a