‘A whisky please; a Talisker.’
There was a barman behind there, too. He reached up and served Luke a decent one. Hand-poured. And Luke felt his mouth was instantly on fire, the whisky burning off the sugar and the nonsense of the previous drinks. His tongue shrank. His family was known for bravery but maybe it had never actually produced a brave man in all these years. He was drunk. The alcohol was now clearing a path to the loneliest part of him and when an Irish song began he stepped outside to smoke.
He had a text from Flannigan in Liverpool, out on the lash with his brother and his schoolmates.
Squad of horror-pigs down here lad total cocknoshes man I h8 them.
Dooley was struggling down in Cork, already champing at the bit to get back for another tour:
Hey Jimmy-Jimmy. Not seen the ladz or heard much fm the bitches but bored man still thinking about Ops. Weird shit sir and douche bags in the papers don’t know nothing. Totally misinformative. Im in car park waiting for Rosie to get off fuckn work have you seen the ladz?
He smoked and used the thumb of his other hand to text back his mother.
Thanks. I’m down seeing Gran but going back up to Glasgow tonight.
He wondered if other people had to think before leaving kisses. The Kilmarnock bus via Pennyburn passed and he took in the emptiness on the upper deck. Nothing is emptier than an empty bus. Seagulls drifted over the railway station and music came pounding from one of the lounge bars at the end of Countess Street. Lennox sent him a smiley face, the third that day, a solitary smiley face. To Luke it said all the things the ginger nut was trying to say. He could see Lennox talking like a hero in some Belfast pub with the boys around him lapping it up. Then Lennox would go to the jacks and piss his wages into the metal trough remembering faraway mortars and shouts down there in the valley. Leaning on the tiles and texting smiley faces to the captain.
He wrote back:
Hey Andy. Keep smiling mate.
There’s no such thing as a quiet drink. Not for Luke, anyway, and not in Bobby’s Bar on a Friday. Luke went in and out of the general cheer and at one point was chuckling to himself on a bar-stool as the noise level rose. A man in an anorak came up when Luke was past caring about military decorum or the last train. ‘I’m not being cheeky, pal,’ the guy said, ‘but can I ask you, were you in the Royal Caledonians?’ Luke turned. He swayed and the man with his hands in his pockets was still speaking. It was a question. ‘Is that your regiment?’
‘Who’s asking?’ The man was on a reluctant mission but he had something invested in carrying it off. Honour, Luke supposed, and honour was the thing that ruined a man’s happiness. He wiped his mouth and gripped the bar. Next minute he was over in the corner talking to a very fat man. Even in drink, Luke
could see the man was wider than the copper table covered in empty tumblers and packs of Regal King Size.
‘I think you knew my son.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Mark McNulty.’
Luke knew right away. He had known the boy was local. He’d known there was a chance when he came into the town. And even through the fog of drink he knew it was the boy’s father, the soldier called Mark who was killed at Bad Kichan. He suddenly saw the boy in the terrible heat of Helmand, smiling kid, eager as anything, one of the detachment squirting him with sunscreen by the ruined fort. Looking into his father’s face and putting his hand into his, Luke saw again the boy’s fury as he shouted in the road and he saw Rashid lifting his gun and shooting him at close quarters. He saw again the boy being hit and the copper bowls erupting and the blood that came from the boy’s mouth.
‘I recognised you from the papers,’ Mr McNulty was saying. Luke was still standing next to the tables. He wanted the boy’s father to come outside to speak in private, just for a moment, because he hadn’t expected to meet him like this and he was trying to become the captain again despite being drunk. The gesture the man made with his hands made it clear he was stuck and didn’t want to move outside.
‘We won’t be long,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t with the Caledonians,’ Luke said, sitting down. ‘I was a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers.’
Mr McNulty stared.
‘We have a long tradition of combat. Fighting in war zones all over the world.’
‘What is this, a careers talk?’
Luke wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to open up with something official and grand, providing a dignified context to the condolences he intended to offer. It was hard to do this after all the drink. ‘It’s a long tradition, Mr McNulty and … many men have given their lives.’
‘Oh, aye. Very good. And do you have a long tradition of taking twenty-one-year-old boys off the beaten track and having them murdered by people on your own side?’ The man was red with anger, his hand shaking over his glass and then quickly wiping his mouth.
‘Mr McNulty, we were ambushed. There was nothing we could do. He was a brave soldier.’
‘Oh fuck off.’
‘We …’
‘Just fuck off. Brave soldier. He was a silly wee boy who thought he could see the world. Fucking running into bullets since he was about eight years old. And then he really ran into one, didn’t he? They say he wanted a square-go with the Taliban and next thing he’s back here in a box. Broke his mother’s heart. He’s over in the graveyard, Captain. My wee boy’s over in the graveyard and you can tell me whenever you’re ready what it was for, because they sent some medals, but maybe you can explain them to me, each one, the silver one, what was that for?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr McNulty. This isn’t the place.’
‘It’s as good as any place.’ He looked up at the two behind the bar and shouted out, ‘Hey, Brian. I didnae realise you were inviting the British army into the bar these days!’
Luke was staring at the man and he tried not to think about his own father and how he had died for Ireland. ‘I’m not going to
argue with you, Mr McNulty. I’m just very sorry. Your son was a brave man and it shouldn’t have happened.’
‘Oh, he was a fucking pest. Joining the army. I don’t know where you’re from but we’re not army people. And he goes and gets himself fucking killed into the bargain.’
‘He did his best.’
‘No, he didn’t. He died, son. He died for nothing. And people like you can say what you like. You sent my boy back in a box and now you’re drinking in my pub.’
Luke stood up.
‘He didn’t die for nothing, Mr McNulty.’
‘He was a fucking idiot.’
IF U B WEIRD WITH ME I’LL B ANGRY
How easy to go from being one with responsibilities to being nothing at all in a nightclub queue. A man who was boss of a platoon section out there in history, an officer, yes, making decisions in the hot fuckery of life, now swaying in the line for the Metro with a nearly dead iPhone in your hand and surrounded by people ten years younger.
If u b weird with me I’ll b angry.
That’s what the text from Lennox said.
And to the clubbers you’re just a pissed guy with no friends. You’re a dude in the wrong clothes. So you start a conversation with them and they’re a bit embarrassed at first but they pass you the joint. And after a while in the queue you buy some coke off
the boy in the white high-tops and you stick it in your boxers and get past the bouncers by straightening up. You expect nothing of the kids but they surprise you by proving you right. Inside the club they veer off into a red pumping chasm of secret belonging and you wander to the bar where some boys gather and you find it hard to believe they’re the same age as Dooley.
You drink sambuca. Jägerbombs. And then the girl Kelly comes out of the smoke all sweaty from the dance floor. You kiss her and she says ‘you’re really nice’ but she can’t put her number into your phone because your phone is dead and anyway the laughter. She pulls you onto the dance floor and she whoops and you say ‘I don’t dance’ and yet the lights bring you out and you find some version of yourself you didn’t know. You try to talk him down and then you give in to the lights and the girl is lost and you’re still there.