My Little Armalite (36 page)

I signed, prominently.

—And we
must
try to get the story into
The Paper
, John.

—Well, it was in there last week, wasn't it?

—So it was. Then we must try to get it in again.

—I'll ask Deborah.

—Will you, John? This is
so
important for
the people of Muswell Hill.

—And, by the holy God, your selfless intervention on their behalf will earn you all crowns in Heaven!

—I beg your pardon?

—Oh, don't worry, Antonia, this is my friend Eamon. He's from Ireland.

—Oh well then.

—But, Johnny, surely
this
is
East Finchley
?

—East Finchley?

—East Finchley?
Here?
Who told you that?

—Well it did kinda
suggest so
on the tube station, and I'd
almost swear
I saw N2 on the street sign outside and –

—Now, now, Eamon.

—Hey, people, I jest, I jest.

—Well, thank God for that!

—Dad?

—Hello, Jack, hello, Will. You still up?

—Dad, George said next time you go abroad on work he could take us paintballing.

—
Special
paintballing!

—Night-time paintballing!

—With like night-sights!

—Über-cool!

—He said we
really should
go.

—Just in case we ever need it.

—He said it's just like being a Scout, really.

—
Be prepared
, you know, Dad?

—Only much, much cooler.

—Can we, Dad?

—I'll talk to George. Now off to bed. You've got the school skiing trip tomorrow and you need to get some sleep.

—Ski-ing? Like,
nooo
, Dad.

—Dad, it's
snowboarding
. G'night.

—What charming young men. Now, John, there's
someone else
from the BBC who wants to talk to you …

Yes, a very nice party.

Having said all my goodbyes and filled the dishwasher, I was having my second and very last cigarette
out in the garden, watching through the window as Sarah played the piano to herself, alone in her secret little world, just as I always loved to see her.

I had made everything all right and –

And then a voice spoke from the darkness behind me.

—Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all.

—Ah, Eamon. I thought you'd gone.

—Oh, I'm in no big rush. You happy-family folk have to score your sleep, of course, and where better than Nwhateverthefuckthisis, but the party starts late in the bad old parts of Zone 1, where degenerate wealth meets impatient youth. That's entertainment, begob! I just wanted to clock you by moonlight before I head off.

—What was that you just said about
Cawdor and Glamis
, Eamon?

—You wha'? I was merely complimenting you on the legwear.

—You were saying you like my trousers?

—
Fantastic-looking, corduroy, glamorous and all.
They go so well with the tweed. Not an original combo, but always effective.

—Oh. You see, I thought you said something else.

—About corduroy? What else
is
there to say?

—Eamon, I'm not going to even
try
to play word games with you.

—I wouldn't. I hit too deep and too hard for you, Johnnyboy. Though I suspect that when it comes to reality you have the odd shot in your locker that I just couldn't live with.

—Hmm. Shall we leave it at that, then?

—Absofuckinglutely. You can count me in for the long march, Johnny, and rely on me to help dish out the shtick.

—The shtick? What on earth do you mean, Eamon?

—Ah. C'mon, Johnny, this is me and the mics are off.
We all have to eat and some of us have to eat better than others, but I mean to say that guff on your shows about
human progress
and
walls between us falling
and everything getting better and better: gas stuff, my man!

—But Eamon, everything's OK now.

—For you, JG.

—For us, Eamon.

—I stand gratefully corrected. But human progress? That's all class-A bollocks and you know it.

—Do I?

—You really believe the Arabs and Israelis are going to sit down one day and make up? You really think that if the ice caps melt or Iran gets the bomb,
nothing much will really happen
?

—Well, not up here it won't, Eamon.

—You think? Maybe the Lord has made a hedge about you and blessed the work of your hands an' all that, but no man is an island, Johnny, even in the best of all possible worlds.

—No, that's Hampstead. But if you
do
cultivate your own garden, well, you never know what you'll find. You might even come across something that might come in handy if things
do
ever go
really
wrong.

—Ah, so you admit they just might?

—Of course I bloody do, Eamon. We know that. Look what happened to us in 1989. And it wasn't just us. Look at this street.

We did. From the garden, we looked up and down the back of this quite pleasant but entirely nondescript run of perfectly modest north-London semis.

—Twenty years ago the people who live in this street wouldn't have been seen dead here. They would have thought it was like a set for some comedy about accountants in suburbia. They would have laughed at us. And now we're all so bloody happy to be here. No.
Not even happy. Just
relieved
. And now come and look at something else.

I took him down to the back of the garden and into the shed. I guided him up the ladder on to the clever little mezzanine and invited him to look out through my special chapel-like window high in the eaves. The window that is, in a sense, the whole point of the shed. The window which, as I had calculated correctly, would, if placed at that height and faced that way, allow me to sit on my little platform and gaze between the houses behind us, right down southwards over the whole of London. I watched Eamon to see the effect. The moonlight fell full on his face, bleaching it of all colour and expression.

—Big bad beautiful place.

—Yes, and full of people working away on the edge of exhaustion, only ever a few months' bad luck away from repossession.

—Ah, Johnny, never fear, these're only wee Brits. They'll take whatever shite.

—I wouldn't be so sure, Eamon. People who never really wanted much can go very funny when they don't get it. Most Germans never voted for Hitler when they had any choice. Hardly any of them wanted another war. Not one in a million of them wanted anything remotely like Auschwitz. In twenty years they'd lost a war, then their savings and then their jobs, and Stalin was next door. They just wanted
normality
back. But enough of them wanted it back at any cost. Any cost at all.

—Maybe best not push the plain people too far, so?

—Best not. Lord, give us peace in our time.

—Amen to that, Johnnyboy. Well, I must away, the mere sight of the old place laid out like that beneath me has set off a Pavlovian cry in my country boy's guts. Black cabs and cocaine, the call of the W1 wild!

—Enjoy, Eamon. Talk to you tomorrow about socialist realism, yeah?

—I already see the topic sitting up nicely for a big forehand winner. G'night and act your name, comrade.

My old friend left for his life and I came down from my eyrie and went back to mine, to my wonderful children and to Sarah. She was still playing Schumann as I walked up behind her and ran my fingers through her hair, guiltless at last, able to love again, a man once more, for the first time since the Berlin Wall fell.

This was the deal.

So really I don't know why I am back here again now, in my perfect shed high on a hill, way above every kind of sea level, up at my special little window, recording these last words.

I have tucked up my children (
tuck-tuck-tuck
) and, for all I know, just sweetly conceived another. The love of my life sleeps in our high-ceilinged home, right where we should be at long long, last. But I find that when I gaze down over London I can see bright flowers of fire in the corners of my eyes. I feel again the unexpectedly gentle kick to my shoulder and sense the hairs on my neck begin to rise. When I sniff at my lapel I smell a scent I know cannot be there.

So much for Newton.

I swear I can see right down there through the night, across the black river and into the grave-cold south-London garage where my little Armalite lies waiting.

It has got me everything I always wanted. I can now remain the nice, liberal man who has never even fantasised (as far as I can remember) about seeing anyone getting physically hurt (apart from Maggie and George W. Bush, obviously). Poor Brian will have to be dealt with, sadly, but after that I should really just lose the
bloody thing while the going is good, and never sit here again, talking at night about it to no one.

Of course I should.

But then again, what if there really is
fucking bloody great big trouble
one day? What if the ice really does melt and the waters rise and the border guards tear off their uniforms, throw down their guns and run?

After all, I mean, these days, God knows.

The author wishes to thank Academi and the
Arts Council of Wales for the bursary given to
help the writing of this book.

 

www.vintage-books.co.uk