The goon came close, limp prominent, and bent over him.
Foxy’s arms were tied behind his back and his right ankle was fastened by rope to a ring in the wall. He was very calm. Foxy was on his back and seemed to spread out his left leg. It was as if he exposed himself further, was more naked, could not defend himself and was close to the cracking point, the threshold and denial of the Code’s principles. He needed only to be tipped.
The goon was over him. Damn little strength left, and all of it so precious. The bruising, the cuts, the burns, the insect bites, now infected and raw, seemed less alive. He flexed the muscles of his left leg. The goon, Mansoor, crouched, and the handkerchief came down towards a place an inch or so above the hair at the pit of Foxy’s stomach. His skin was rubbed hard, dried and smoke poured from the goon’s mouth. The handkerchief went back into the pocket. The cigarette was taken from the lips and went down towards the skin.
It touched. Foxy reacted.
Didn’t feel the pain, not that time. It took all of his strength, and more, from reservoirs he hadn’t known existed any longer. His leg came up straight. Then he swivelled as best he could on his backside, the leg bent sharply at the knee, and the impact pitched the goon over. His weight would have gone onto the damaged leg and he stumbled. The cigarette dropped, he lost his balance and sprawled.
Foxy locked him with his leg.
He had no weapon. His arms were behind his back so he couldn’t punch. His ankle was roped so he couldn’t kick. He couldn’t grapple with the goon’s belt or get to his throat. He did the head-butt.
A young policeman, called to closing-time fights in pubs and late-night brawls in the streets, had learned that back-street combat was with a broken bottle or the bone at the front of the skull. He had seen it done, and known of the pain it inflicted on hard men. He held the goon close with his legs around the man’s waist and slammed his head into his face. He heard the squeal.
The pub and street fighters he had seen as a young policeman went for the nose.
Foxy hit again and again. The guards had come from the door and his ears were gripped. The small of his back was unprotected and boots lashed the bottom of his spine. For a moment the goon’s ear was close to Foxy’s mouth.
It was hard for Foxy to speak through the split lips, swollen gums and the gaps where teeth had been. He spoke in good, correct Farsi into the ear: ‘Who is fucking your mother tonight, Mansoor? Who is riding her? Is there a queue round the block waiting to fuck your mother? What do you do, Mansoor, while your mother is fucking the street? Do you get kids to suck you off?’ Vile language, learned well. He was dragged clear and his face was hit. His leg was bent back so that the goon could be pulled off him. He knew those sentences, in Farsi, by heart and had often spoken them. It was under instruction by the interrogators of the Joint Force Intelligence Team, when he’d done terping, that he had mastered the lines guaranteed to make an Arab prisoner or captured Iranian lose any vestige of cool. The interrogators knew their work, and Foxy had seen its success many times.
The goon was on his feet. He flailed his arms to drive back the guards, his chest heaved and blood flowed from his distorted nostrils. His feet stamped, and the bar of wood was in his hand.
The first blow struck him – Foxy would have been at the threshold if there had been another cigarette – and more deluged down on him. He saw nothing in the cell. The table was gone, and the cigarette packet, the matchbox, the chair, the guards at the door and the light in the ceiling. There was darkness. Foxy no longer fought the beating. He was overwhelmed, and his strength had gone.
He saw, at the last, a man in a darkened street. He wore a black frock coat and carried a top hat in one hand, a cane in the other, and walked proudly. It was the last thing Foxy saw – and the man’s head was lowered in respect.
‘Still a good turn out, is there, Doug?’ he was asked.
They were lucky in his village to have their own British Legion branch and the building was adequate, in need of repairs but the fabric was sound. Doug Bentley always came for a drink, or three, on the evening before a repatriation.
There were four beers in his round, all low-strength, which reflected the ages of his friends. He was standing and collecting the glasses to take them back to the bar. They couldn’t afford a paid steward any longer, and it was accepted that glasses were reused, not clean ones for when each drink was poured. ‘Still plenty there. It’s held up well.’
‘Third in a fortnight? Right, Doug?’ From an old Pioneer Corps man.
He paused. ‘That’s right, the third. It’s five have come through. Anyone want any crisps or peanuts?’
‘My Annie won’t watch it.’ From a paratrooper who had done Cyprus and Aden. ‘Upsets her. I used to watch regular, but I don’t now. It’s bad enough seeing it on TV, but it must be pretty difficult, Doug, week in and week out – for you, I mean. Yes, nuts, thanks.’
It wasn’t talked about much in the bar – it was in the early days, but it had been running for three years now. Doug Bentley had carried their standard for all of that time, and no one else had jostled him for the job. He didn’t talk about it unless another raised the subject of Bassett and the hearses coming up the High Street. He would have liked to share it more often – not just with Beryl – and the opportunity yawned. He took it. ‘It’s a damn sight less upsetting for us than for the parents and the grannies, the brothers, the nephews, all the kids from the family. One last week, a woman cried her heart out. All quiet except for her sobbing. It went right through to your guts. She was weeping her eyes out in the road. We all felt it, all of us in our line. What I remember, the week before, was all the hands that were just laid on the glass of the hearse, the nearest they could get to the coffin with the flag on it, and that same one – a big family and friends group had come over from the east of England – an older man shouted, “Well done, boys,” for the two of them going through, and others picked it up. “Well done, boys,” and they were all clapping. It gets in your bones, like rheumatism does. I wouldn’t miss it. I say that in honesty.’
‘I’m the crisps, the bacon ones, Doug.’ He was a veteran of Suez, artillery. ‘Do they really like it, being out there and having the world watching them? Nothing like that in our day – were popped down out there. Seems unnatural to me, like it’s a spectacle – I’m not criticising you, Doug.’
‘Fair enough. I was chatting with a sergeant from a unit last month, and he said the military and the families appreciate people being there – like it’s recognition. Could be called appreciation. It’s what’s said… I tell you, when they finish coming through Bassett I don’t know what I’ll do with myself… Right, four pints, one crisps and we’ll have two nuts.’
He went to the bar.
His neighbours thought it was morbid, and had told Beryl so, him and her going off so regular on the first bus to Swindon, the second bus to Wootton Bassett, and the long reverse journey. While he was down at the Legion, the night before a repatriation, she would be running the iron over his charcoal slacks to get a decent crease and brushing the shoulders of his blazer, the one with the Pay Corps badge. If she’d time she’d polish his three medals, and before he’d come out he’d do his shoes so that they gleamed and put the whitener on his formal gloves. Last thing, she’d check there were no crumples in the black ribbon she tied with a flourished bow at the top of the standard pole. His neighbours had empty, vacant lives and nothing to lift them. Doug Bentley thought himself blessed, and also that a hole, wide enough for a volcano to spew from, would be left in his remaining years when the repatriations stopped coming into the Lyneham base, and the hearses no longer drove up the hill into the town.