Civvies (7 page)

He was in luck. Dillon was mooching across the paved courtyard, hands in his pockets, just as the taxi turned the corner. Jimmy hopped out, told the driver to wait, and intercepted Dillon at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Here’s your cut!’ The grin was back, but not quite sure of itself. ‘An’ we got a bonus!’ Jimmy handed over the thick wad, keeping his back to the cab driver. ‘How much?’ ‘Three grand — not bad for one night’s work, eh?’ Dillon’s surly expression faded as he gazed wonderingly at the money in his hand. ‘What — each? You kiddin’ me?’ ‘Naaahh!’ Jimmy slapped Dillon on the arm. ‘Look, I gotta go, Frank, be in touch soon, yeah?’ Dillon looked him in the eyes. ‘You sure, Jimmy … no strings?’ ‘No strings, Frank.’ Jimmy ducked his head, turned away. ‘Night.’ ‘G’night you thievin’ bastard!’ said Dillon, cuffing him. ‘I’m sorry I sounded off on you… don’t get in too deep, Jimmy.’ Jimmy looked back. ‘Steve Harris still dossin’ down at your place?’ he asked quietly. ‘He’s got no place else to go.’ ‘He’ll bleed you dry, Frank.’ Bitterness there, even a tinge of envy maybe. ‘His kind always do.’ ‘He doesn’t lie to me, Jimmy.’ Dillon’s voice had icicles on it. ‘I trust old Steve, an’ I’ll get him back on his feet.’ He went up the stairs, footsteps ringing out on the concrete. Jimmy nodded to himself, listening as the footsteps faded, knowing Dillon meant every word. He said to the empty stairwell, ‘What about me, Frank? What about me?’

Susie was mending the kids’ shirts when Dillon walked in, snipping frayed cuffs, binding them with strips of cotton she’d bought down the market. There was soccer on the telly, but the sound was off, vividly coloured doll-like figures darting about on smooth emerald-green baize, chasing four shadows at once. She said, ‘Where’ve you been?’ ‘Ran into a pal of Jimmy’s, did a bit of collectin’.’ Dillon looked at the screen, at the carpet, at the ceiling fixture, and turned to go. ‘Buy you the suit, did he?’ Susie carried on sewing. ‘What?’ Dillon fingered the lapel as if seeing the suit for the first time. ‘Oh… yeah.’ He turned again. ‘What’s the matter, Frank?’ Dillon slowly faced her, tugging at his moustache, eyes on the screen. He said quietly, ‘It’s not going to work.’ ‘What isn’t?’ The words like twin pistol shots. ‘Civvies.’ Dillon cleared his throat. ‘I’m signing on for mercenary duty…’ ‘You can’t do that to me — the kids.’ She’d started to flush up, eyes bright and stony. ‘The whole point of you leaving the Army was so you could be with us.’ ‘But if I can’t get a job…’ ‘You telling me with eighteen years’ experience training men they can’t help you?’ Susie said, incredulity straining her voice. ‘Who’s they? Eh? Go on, tell me!’ As if she had touched a raw nerve in him, the bottled-up resentment and bitterness spilling out. ‘I was in the Army, now I’m out of it. That’s it. And if you want the truth — I didn’t leave for you or the kids.’ ‘What?’ Susie mouthed, stunned. ‘We used to pride ourselves we were the toughest, the best fighting men, but they want to change it all, change our image. It was my life, my lads… but I got as far as I could go, as far as they’d let someone like me go.’ Dillon stood there in the cheap, wrinkled suit and battered Puma trainers, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, the thin line of the scar a whiter shade of pale on his cheek. ‘Yes-men, that’s what they want. Yes-men. They don’t want soldiers, they want blokes with good education.’ He gazed off somewhere, suddenly very still, far away. ‘The Falklands was the best time in my life. Everything I’d been trained for came together. It was the same for all of us — everything I was made sense.’ ‘And it doesn’t now?’ Susie asked quietly, getting up. Emotions that frightened her were chasing themselves across his face. She reached out to hold him, comfort him, and Dillon backed away, the cords in his neck standing out. ‘Frank, please, I’m trying to understand — don’t get angry. Talk to me, help me… the Falklands was a long time ago, I know you wanted to go to the Gulf —’ Dillon pushed past her, slamming open the sideboard cupboard to get a bottle of Famous Grouse and a glass, poured out a large measure. ‘For your information, there’s still a war going on in Ireland,’ he said, scathing, as if talking to a cretin, his face ugly and twisted. He took a huge gulp and yelled, ‘Steve… Steve! Get down here!’ Susie walked out — very nearly. At the door she turned back, gave it another try. He was her husband, she loved him, he deserved that much at least. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy, Frank, but…’ she hesitated, ‘the bills have to be paid, and I’ve been thinking — with the kids at school now — I could get work.’ Dillon’s knuckles showed white on the hand holding the glass, the scotch jumping and splashing his fingers. He barked hoarsely, ‘I can provide for my wife and kids!’ Black rage seeping out of his pores, making his eyes hot. ‘I don’t want to be provided for with a dead man’s pension,’ Susie told him calmly. Dillon swung round, his face so tortured and strange she feared for her safety. As if, without a single qualm, he could have smashed the bottle and gouged her eyes out with the jagged edges. ‘Steve!… STEVE!’ Steve burst in. He only needed one look at Dillon. He gripped Susie and bundled her roughly out of the room and before she could open her mouth slammed the door in her face. Susie furiously gripped the handle, ready to storm back in, freezing as she heard the splintering crash of the bottle and glass being flung to the floor. Another crash, more glass breaking, and then came a high-pitched whinnying laugh that chilled the blood in her veins. She stood, unmoving, staring at the door, listening. ‘I’m going crazy, I’m going crazy… For chrissakes I’m dying… Don’t let them bury me here… ‘ That awful weird, whinnying laugh again. ‘All night he screamed “Help me, I’m dying, I’m wet, my chest is bleeding”…’ ‘No — he said his — heart — was bleeding.’ Tears streamed down Susie’s face. Turning, she slowly began to mount the stairs, then paused on the third step at the sound of her husband’s sobbing. Wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand, Susie went back down and opened the door. Shards of glass littered the carpet. Over in the corner the toppled lamp standard lay broken, it’s flowered shade bent and torn, and in the dim glow of the vari-flame gas-fire she saw Dillon and Steve crouched together on the sofa, arms around each other’s shoulders. Suddenly aware of her, Dillon seemed to cringe away, hiding his wet face. Very softly, Susie murmured, ‘Turn the fire off when you come to bed, Frank… Goodnight Steve.’ Steve looked at Susie, and gave her a kind of tentative half smile. Then a small wink. It was then, in that moment, that she knew — for the first time realised the truth. That it wasn’t Steve who needed Frank. She’d got it totally, completely wrong. It was Frank who needed Steve. Needed this boy with the shattered throat to help him heal his own wounds. Frank’s were different from Steve’s, his were inside, raw and open, he needed Steve to heal them, and Susie would simply have to wait, he hadn’t really come back to Civvies, yet. Susie silently closed the door and went to bed. She lay curled up, waiting for him, hearing laughter from below, hearing the muffled sounds making it impossible for her to sleep. She tossed and turned, and hours later heard the thud-thud of them both coming up the stairs, heard through the thin wall Frank making sure Steve’s filter was cleared, the strange, garbled interaction that she still found difficult to understand, yet Frank was able to carry on long conversations with Steve, as if he were so in tune with his gasping burped sentences there appeared nothing unusual, and the truth was, she had witnessed with her own eyes Steve’s transformation. His confidence was growing stronger every day, whereas Frank seemed more and more unsure of himself. At last Susie heard the click-click of lights being turned out, of toilet flushing and still she waited, waited for her husband to come to bed. Eventually, she got up and crept from her bedroom. Standing on the landing she caught sight of Dillon in their kids’ bedroom, standing staring at the old Habitat felt board with all his photographs pinned up. She hesitated, and then inched open the bedroom door. ‘It’s very late Frank’, she whispered. He nodded his head, and then turned slowly towards her, he seemed so vulnerable, so at a loss. She reached out and took his hand, and he allowed himself to be drawn from his sons’ bedroom into his own. She helped him undress and then folded away his clothes as he slipped into their bed, wearing just his jockey shorts. He lay back on the pillows, and she got in beside him and snuggled close, not too close, she was content with just being near him, feeling his body heat. Everything inside her wanted him to reach out, hook his arm around her and draw her even closer, but he remained distant, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Steve is gonna be okay,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, yes I think he is…’ Susie didn’t say what was in her mind or ask all the questions she wanted to ask, she knew intuitively that he meant that he was going to be all right. She could wait, she had got used to it over the years, and she loved her husband deeply. It was Susie’s understanding that had kept their marriage steady, when many of their friends’ had fallen apart, and, as if he knew it, Dillon drew her to him, easing his arm around her, pressing his hand in the small of her back until she was cradled beside him. He was maybe unaware of the impact this simple gesture meant to Susie, he had always done it and she had never been able to describe to anyone what it meant to her. She could never, or would never, make the first approach to him, it was not in her nature, but when he reached out and drew her close to him, it was, to Susie, like a great warrior claiming his woman. She liked that, liked his domination of her, and trusted him totally, not only to take care of her, but of their sons. ‘I am so proud of you,’ she whispered. He looked down at her, the scar etched in his face, white and translucent in the darkness, and then he smiled… and he was no great warrior, no sergeant, he was the man she had fallen in love with, and when he gave her that sweet gentle smile, seen so rarely, but a smile that altered his entire face, she felt for the first time he had come home.

Rifles held aloft, grinning through blackened faces. A pair of boots, steaming gently, inscription: ‘Wally’s Boots!’ An Argie with half his face missing, the other eye hanging on his cheek. Steve clowning around, draped in a Union Jack. A gang of them in the
NAAFI
canteen at Port Stanley, toasting the camera with fifteen Budweisers. The enemy dead, stacked three deep. Dillon, Harry Travers and Jimmy Hammond on their haunches, raw-eyed, bone-weary, a soiled dressing above Dillon’s right eye. Four or five of them grouped round a subaltern (an anonymous hand sticking up behind giving the vee-sign). Three shivering Argie prisoners, smiling scared at the camera, waving. Drunken Taffy pissing in the snow, writing his name. Steve tapped this last one, shoulders shaking, the jerky wheezing breath that passed for his laugh puttering out of his gaping mouth. He wiped his eyes. Dillon, grinning, turned a page, and this set Steve off again. He’d had it, helpless, wiped out. He pointed at the photograph in Dillon’s album, tears dripping off his chin. Dillon straightened up, stuck his nose in the air, and did a perfect officer’s accent, braying, ‘What —? What did you say, Harris?’ Dillon put his hands to his ears, miming headphones, and did Steve’s part. ‘Tank. It’s a tank, sir! Tank.’ Officer: ‘Where’s the bloody tank, man?’ Neck straining forward, peering through binoculars. ‘Tent you blitherin’ idiot!
TENT
. That’s a ruddy tent on the beach, not a tank!’ Dillon broke off, chest heaving, and the laughter swept through him sweetly, and once he’d started he couldn’t stop. He fell back into the sofa, legs splayed and quivering, head flung back, shouting out his laughter. Steve, growing quieter now, sat and watched him, eyes shining with tears of utter devotion and love.

It was a dream. Taffy wasn’t fooled, he knew that full well, because it was always the same dream. But he was still trapped in it, and there was no escape. Always the same crushing pressure on his chest. Smell of burning flesh, possibly his own. Screams of agony mimicking the distant wail of sirens. The taste of blood, like salty glue, in his mouth (he recognised the taste). Thick black smoke swirling up past a flickering fluorescent tube dangling from its bracket. And the dream had a musical soundtrack too, thud-thud-thudding in his head, keeping time with the pulse throbbing in his temples. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! I’ve changed my mind This world is fine — Goodness Gracious! Great Balls of… The song always ended right there, Jerry Lee cut off in his prime, old Frank’s all-time favourite rock classic. Funny how it still went on in his head, the lyric completing itself, even when all he could actually hear were screams and moans and choking and sobbing. Taffy pushed, straining to shift the massive beam pinning him to the floor. What didn’t make it any easier, the frigging thing was alight, pretty blue and yellow flames dancing along it, scorching his eyeballs and searing the skin off his palms. He was aware of a body close by — a girl’s — the beam across her legs, a dark ugly stain seeping through the bright green of her skirt. Taffy gritted his teeth and heaved with all his might. It was moving, definitely. He’d got the bastard! Another shove and they’d be free. The girl screamed as the weight lifted off her. Taffy wanted to tell her it was okay, he’d soon have her out, but he didn’t have an ounce of breath to spare… holding the bastard at arm’s stretch now, gathering himself for one final push, the muscles in his shoulders nearly tearing themselves loose as he tried to fling it aside. Something cracked, splintered up above. Taffy stared and through the smoke he saw the rest of the ceiling, sheets of flame racing across it — Holy Shit! — start to give way. Taffy shut his eyes and began to pray. He covered his ears as the crackling roar suddenly welled up, angry and deafening, and the ceiling fell in. Instinctively, Taffy twisted away, bringing his knees up defensively, and rolled off the bed, ending up in a foetal crouch on the strip of thin carpet under the window. He opened his eyes, blinking warm sweat away, and gazed with trembling relief at the bubbled pink paintwork of the skirting-board, six inches from his nose: his arms, his shoulders, his entire back, aching from the strain of wrestling with that eternal bloody burning beam. Daylight poured in. What time was it? Morning, afternoon, he hadn’t a clue. Only eight pints of Murphy’s stout last night, no reason to sleep past ten. He unwound and pushed himself up, feeling through the floorboards a steady throbbing vibration, coming from the bass beat of the stereo next door. Night and day it went on. Day and bloody night. In warm weather it blasted through the open windows, Queen, Phil Collins, Dire fucking Straits, and the lad’s so-called music was even worse — a jangled thrashing of tuneless noise like a dozen panel-beaters on piece-time, polluting a quarter-mile radius of the council estate with its mindless racket. And as if all that wasn’t more than flesh and blood could stand, the seventeen-year-old son — dyed black dreadlocks, rings through his nose, ripped jeans, knee-high lace-up boots — was also a drummer in a punk band. Three, four times a week he had his mates round in the back bedroom, smashing hell out of their instruments and loosening the foundations. To Taffy, the singer sounded like he was having his back teeth pulled. He looked up from buttoning his shirt at Mary’s voice, down in the hallway, and listened, frowning. Not arguing exactly, more like pleading. Then an answering man’s voice, laying down the law in a flat, nasal drone. One of the kids started crying, and this set off the toddler. What the hell was going on? Taffy strode out onto the landing, brushing strands of greying hair from his forehead. Two men in brown coats were coming out of the front room, humping the big 16-inch television set between them, while another bloke in a suit and dingy white shirt with curling collar points was waving a sheaf of documents in Mary’s face. Taffy caught something about ‘Poll Tax’ and ‘default’ and ‘reclaim’ and he didn’t need to hear any more. Bastard bailiffs! In stockinged feet Taffy vaulted down the stairs in three leaps, grabbed a bunch of shiny lapel in his meaty fist, fumbling with the front door Yale lock. ‘I’ll give you bastards two minutes to get out of this house!’ Yelling in the man’s face, flecking him with saliva. ‘Taffy, don’t —’ Mary clawed at his arm, her chin quivering, brown eyes large and moist, swallowing back the tears. She dragged him off. ‘It’ll do no good… just get back up the stairs. We can’t stop them.’ The big Welshman stood there, panting with rage, wiry grey chest hair exposed through his half-buttoned shirt front. He jerked his thumb towards the kitchen. ‘They take the fridge, what’ll you do with the food?’ he demanded. Mary shook her head helplessly, biting her lip. The men in brown were edging towards the front door, hands locked under the TV set. ‘Put — that — down!’ Taffy pointed to the kitchen doorway where his two eldest were clinging to the door jamb, bawling their heads off, the toddler shrieking in the background. ‘We’ve got an eighteen-month-old kid in there…’ Trying to make him listen for once, to get some sense into that bone-solid head of his, Mary gave it to him straight: ‘It’s either this or they’ll evict us — just stop it!’ Taffy immediately stepped back, raising his hands. Fine, okay with me, go right ahead. As the men got to the front door Taffy bent down and yanked the carpet, bellowing out his defiance, taking their legs away and sending all three of them colliding into each other, the TV set doing a wobbly as they very nearly dropped it. ‘I’m helping them, woman,’ Taffy explained reasonably, coming forward with a strange smile on his face. ‘I’m not gonna hurt anyone.’ Mary cringed, hating the blank expression that gave away nothing. It was as if his face was a mask — only his eyes were alive, and very very dangerous. The two men in brown got the door open and got out, having gently deposited the TV set at the bottom of the stairs. Taffy helped the man in the suit on his way with a shove in the back and a boot up the jacksi, and slammed the door on the whole mangy pack of them.