THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (44 page)

The tie was let go. Wroughton fell back. The shadow moved away from him. The blood was on his chin and in his mouth. It washed round his teeth and ran in his throat. As the clatter of the boots left him, he managed in a supreme effort to lift himself on one elbow.

Through a spew of blood, Wroughton shouted, 'Pity you couldn't satisfy her - she said you were a lousy screw.'

The boots went away, the stride never breaking.

He pulled himself up, using the door-handle, and sagged into the seat, then drove out of the car park.

Wroughton knew enough of personal medicine to realize that if any of his ribs had been broken, or his wrist or his jaw, the pain would have been too great for him to drive. What was hurt was his pride. He went through deserted streets. What was kicked and punched, blown away, was his prized self-esteem. He reached the compound and held up his ID for the guard to see, his face turned away.

Inside, he stripped off his clothes, moaning at the struggle to loosen the belt, the zip and the buttons. His linen suit was torn at the knees and elbows and smeared with the car park's dirt; his shirt was blood-stained. When he had binned the suit, shirt, socks, shoes and underclothes, he crawled across the floor, dragged out the telephone plug, then switched off his mobile. Eddie Wroughton could not face the world. Naked, he sat in his chair and let the darkened room close around him.

She lay on the stone patio. She thought of love.

Far in the distance, below the bungalow, she heard the high-pitched roar of a powered engine.

For Bethany Jenkins, love was alive.

Infatuation, no. Lust, no. Love, yes - damnit. It consumed her. Love was the skin, could be pinched, scratched, scraped, but could not be shed - the hard skin on her legs and arms, the soft skin below the hair on her thighs, the tanned skin on her face. She could not forget him.

Her mother had said to her once, on a third gin and Italian, that she'd seen her father across a crowded box at Newbury races - before they'd met, before they'd spoken - and known, when their eyes had met, through the shoulders and between the heads, that he was the man with whom she would live her life.

Love was not, as Beth reckoned it, the product of introductions made by grandmothers, aunts and best friends. Wasn't about bloody suitability. Love was not sensible. Love happened, and fuck the consequences.

Love was the chance meeting on the upper deck of a late-night London bus, in a carriage on a train out of King's Cross going north

. . . Love was not about earning prospects in the City, nor about decent families and fat inheritances.

It was beyond control. Did not have an agenda. A rifle was raised, a knife was grasped, and a man held her life in his hand. She didn't know him, he didn't know her. He had put aside the rifle, had shielded her from the knife - had protected her. She had not believed him. She'd said: 'Are you going to try to rape me . . . are you going to kill me?' She'd held the little opened penknife with the two-inch blade. He'd said: 'No . . . I am going to dig you out.' He had. And she had loved him.

'Well, I can't bloody help it,' she said to the moths. 'It's not my fault, blame the bloody hormones.'

The beams came up the track towards her bungalow.

Beth would have said that she remembered him with more clarity now, on the patio, than an hour after he had disappeared over the crest of the dune . .. Would her mother understand? It would take more than three gin and Italians - if Beth ever met him again - for her mother to take her daughter into her arms and gush, 'Oh, that's wonderful, darling, I'm so happy for you.' Love came out of a sky that was clear blue . . .

The big vehicle stopped on the track in front of her small green watered garden and more moths danced in its headlights. A window lowered.

A voice called to her, 'Is this the residence of Miss Bethany? Are you Miss Bethany, ma'am?'

'It is. I am.'

The door nearest her opened. She saw the bundle lifted with big hands over the passenger's body, like it had been over the gear lever, then it was dropped down. She saw the boy.

Blood was caked on his robe.

'You'll forgive the intrusion, ma'am. We found him out in the Sands. His camel was finished and he was damned near gone. We filled him up with water. He gave us your name. Where he's come from, I don't know. I don't have time to play with, ma'am, we've a plane to catch. He's not hurt. Nothing wrong with him, 'cept his tongue. All I know is, he gave your name. So, I can take him back to Security at the gate and dump him, or I can leave him here - and we're running late for our plane. Ma'am, it's your decision.'

'Leave him here,' she said.

The boy was part of him. She remembered the boy's whistle, sharp, through the fingers at the small mouth, telling him it was time to leave her. She saw the dark bloodstain on his robe, and the lighter spatter that surrounded it. She felt so bloody weak.

The boy came from him, she knew it, and she knew the dark bloodstain was his.

'Don't you ever listen, Mum? Don't you ever care about what I'm saying, what I want? What's it to you?'

He did not hear his own voice, its anger.

'It's only money. I want the money for the fare and the money for spending. Is that such a big deal? I want money, got it? I want money to get out of this shit-hole. It's crap here,
crap.
It's the end of the bloody world here. All my life, do you want me here? Bloody wonderful life living here - oh, yes, oh, yes. Top of the bloody world, isn't it? What's the boundaries of the world? Ettingshall and Coseley, Woodcross and Bradley? Rookery Road and bloody Daisy Street? Is that as far as the world goes? Don't go over the railway line, best not to cross the canal bridge - might bloody fall off the end of the world.

I want more in my life than this heap of shit's got. I mean, what is there here? Bingo, chips and work, cinema and last bus, girls who want to be hairdressers - what is there here? I want some excitement, I want to bloody live - not locked up here, not in this bloody cage.'

He did not know, as he cried out the anger of it, that the old language ruled, had come back from across the chasm.

'You got the money. What do you have to do? Just get yourself down to the building society, draw it. What's money for? "For a rainy day, Caleb." It rains here every bloody day. I want something to remember. I don't want to grow old in this bloody place, no bloody excitement. When else am I going to get that sort of a chance? Look at this place, it's full of the walking dead. When did you last hear anyone laugh? I want laughter and sunshine and, Mum, I want
excitement.
I want to breathe . . . I'm dying here, I'm going to be walking dead . . . I have this chance and I have to take it.'

He did not see that a Bedouin guide crouched over him and used a wet cloth to try to still the confused rambling.

'They're good guys. They get away, out of here, every two years.

They're my best mates. It's a proper invitation, Mum. All I have to do is find the fare. You got anything against them, my best mates? So they're Pakis - is that your problem, Mum? My best mates are Pakistanis. Well, it's where you bloody live, isn't it? You - we - live among Asians. That's your choice. They're all right, doing a bloody sight better than us. Farooq and Amin are my best mates. They'll look after me. I'll be with their families . . . Just once, two weeks, I'll get to a place I've never been. And I'll get some bloody excitement.

Cop on, Mum. Please.'

He did not feel the cool of the cloth or the heat of the fever that caught him.

'Get me straight, Mum, I'm going. I want it. Mum, if I have to take you down to the building society, half break your bloody arm doing it, I will. I'm going. It'll be like freedom, two weeks of being bloody free, shot of this place. You going to miss me, Mum? You going to cry on your pillow, Mum? Are you fuck. No, you'll go to the bingo.

Mum, have you ever heard of the Khyber Pass? It's history. You ever heard of the North West Frontier? I was down the library, it's fantastic. I want to be there, breathe it, feel it . . . Then I'll be home, and the bloody door'll lock behind me. Mum, don't cry. Mum, 1 hate it when you bloody cry .. . You shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have. I'm not arrogant, greedy. Don't ever say that again, Mum. I want to have been somewhere. I want to be someone.'

He did not taste the cloth over his mouth, but it quietened him.

She felt strangely calmed. She had the telephone in her hand, had dialled, and she heard it ring out. An age before it was answered.

'Yes?' She heard a stifled yawn. 'Samuel Bartholomew - who's that?'

She swallowed hard. 'You may remember me, Beth Jenkins.'

'I remember you - fit as a flea.'

'Sorry about the time.'

'Not a problem. What can I do for you?'

A line was drawn in front of her. The boy was behind her, gorged with food and water from her fridge. She had questioned him, a mix of brusque interrogation and of gentle probing. She knew what had happened and that he was wounded . . . The boy had described a gash to the head and a slashed leg, and the blood of proof was on the boy's robe. With simplicity, the boy had described the injuries, the weakness, the loss of consciousness. He might already be dead.

Lost and gone,
dead.
And the boy had described a track, and she had taken the big-scale map down from a shelf above her desk, spread it on the tiled floor and knelt beside it with the telephone. The line was drawn in front of her. It was like the deep indentation made by the tyres of an earth-moving Caterpillar tractor. It could not be missed, or avoided. It stretched, either way, in front of her. The line blocked her. She recognized the moment, did not delude herself: the moment would define her life. She could step over it, she could turn her back on it.

'Are you still there? I asked what I can do for you, Miss Jenkins.'

She did not know who else she could have turned to, only this slug-fat man at the end of a long-distance phone line - not the doctor at the Shaybah clinic, from the Emirates . . . She took the step, crossed the line.

'I need you down here, in the desert.'

'Excuse me, but I'm in Riyadh. Don't you have medical staff where you are?'

'I need you, I'm afraid.'

'I think it reasonable of me, Miss Jenkins, to request an explanation.'

He was the only doctor she could have called.

'It's a friend . . . '

'Yes.'

'. . . who is hurt out in the Sands.'

'Then get a helicopter, Miss Jenkins. Get a helicopter to lift him out.'

'That is not possible,' she said, and the calm had not deserted her.

'I'm not following you. What's he done - turned his vehicle over?'

She sensed the boy standing motionless behind her, eyes on her, not understanding her. The boy had been in the desert for three days and three nights. He had hazarded his life to come to her.

Beth said crisply, 'I can't send for a helicopter, I cannot use a local doctor. My friend has been wounded in military action.'

'God! Military action? Am I really hearing this?'

'From a missile attack, Dr Bartholomew, my friend has a head wound and a leg wound. I think he has very little time.'

'Do you have any comprehension of what you're asking of me?'

'I do - because I'm asking it of myself.'

'An enemy of the regime, is that your friend?'

'He is just my friend.'

'I lead an easy life, Miss Jenkins - what you request is—'

She heard only the wheeze of his breathing. She thought of him in turmoil and the sweat running on his neck. She was across the line.

She waited, did not help him. She let the silence hang.

'God help me - why am I doing this? Where did you say you were? Where do I come to?'

When she'd told him, when she'd ended the call, Beth took the boy out on to her patio. She pointed. She showed him the distant lights in the compound. Under one awning, brightly lit, were the fuselage and the extended wings of an aircraft, but the space under the nearer awning was empty. The boy called it the 'eye in the sky'. He told her of the Predator, which carried two missiles, could not be heard, could not be seen and had found them twice. She had her hand on the boy's shoulder and it rested on the darker bloodstain. Mapping.

Evaluation of performance under conditions of extreme heat. The
bitch.

The lying bitch.

She went inside, the boy following her, and she emptied cupboards of what she would need to take.

'I don't think I'm going to be able to help you.' The headteacher leaned back in his swivel chair. Jed watched him. 'Don't get me wrong, Mr Lovejoy, I'm not being obstructive here. Of course, I will do everything I can to help, everything within my ability - and I quite understand that, on a matter of national security, you are vague to the point of opacity on the reasons for your visit - but, and I don't wish to obstruct, I am just not able to help.'

Beside Jed's feet was a bucket into which leaking rainwater dripped with monotony every fifteen seconds. The walls were damp, too, and posters peeled off them. He did not think that the headteacher, his face pale from the drudgery of work, lied. The photograph he had brought from Guantanamo lay on the cluttered desk.

'You'll deserve an explanation for my negative response. You believe the man whose photograph you have shown me is approxi-mately twenty-four years old, and therefore left the Adelaide a minimum of six years ago. I have been here two years, and I doubt you'll find a single member of my staff who has taught here for more than four years. Put brutally, we don't last. Adelaide Comprehensive is a sink school. Believe me, it's hard work. It sucks the enthusiasm from you - I'm not ashamed to say it. We burn out here, and quickly.

If we're lucky, we move on somewhere else where the stress is Jess acute. If we're unlucky we sign on with a doctor and accept our failure. We try to prepare our students for adult life, to give them a smattering of education - occasionally we even hit the heights of an exam pass - but the future of the majority is car theft, petty burglary, drug-dealing, under-age pregnancy, vandalism .. . The truth is, youthful ambition - other than for criminality - is rare indeed.'