This Is Not Forgiveness by Celia Rees

  ‘You’re lucky your ribs aren’t bust.’

  I lay the boxes on the counter. The laptop goes to the screensaver downloaded from The Sun. He was probably on some porn site. The screen he was viewing comes back momentarily. He wasn’t looking at porn; he was looking at guns.

  ‘Will you look at that?’ He keeps his finger on the touch pad. ‘The Barrett M107 50 cal. Most powerful sniper rifle to date. The bullets are five inches long.’ He stretches thumb and forefinger. ‘Big as your dick, little brother. It’s accurate up to one and a half miles, maybe two. It can punch through concrete, armour-plating. If you get hit by that, you don’t get up.’

  He closes the site and the screensaver comes back again.

  ‘How’s your lip?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He’s speaking with a lisp out of the left side of his mouth. ‘Must have got hit by a south paw. Don’t hurt. Much.’ He gives a lopsided grin and his laugh turns to a wince. ‘That does.’ He reaches across and opens the bag that I’ve put on the counter. ‘Not more stuff from Mum. Be Good to Yourself? Jesus Christ! I bet that’s Martha.’ He squints at it through his good eye. ‘Do us a favour and chuck it in the bin.’

  But I don’t do that. I put it in the freezer. There is no food in the fridge. The shelves are stacked with cans and bottles: Guinness, Murphy’s, Stella, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Miller, Magners, all arranged by size and label.

  ‘Stop fussing around.’ He reaches past me to take out a Bud, then readjusts a Carlsberg that has got slightly out of line. ‘You’re as bad as the old dear.’

  He pulls the tab and gulps the contents, the beer spilling down his chin and dripping on to his chest. He wipes it round, like it’s some kind of lotion.

  ‘That’s better!’ He lets out a belch. ‘Beer’s the best thing for a hangover, you know that? What you doing now? I fancy a full English. They do a good one down at Kelley’s. Wash it down with a pint of Murphy’s. Coming?’

  ‘Nah. I’m on my way to work.’

  ‘Punting the punters, eh?’

  ‘I’m the punter, to be strictly accurate.’

  ‘You said it!’ His laugh ends in a grimace. ‘Piss off, will you? You’re killing me! Literally!’ He doubles up. ‘They really did my ribs over. Jesus Christ! I think I’ve punctured something.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to go down the hospital? Check it out?’

  ‘Fuck that! I hate hospitals. Look what they did to Grandpa.’

  ‘He had a stroke. There was nothing they could do.’

  ‘That’s their story. He was OK when he went in. Next thing you know, he can’t find his own arse.’

  That’s not how it was, but there’s no point arguing. Rob loved Grandpa and doesn’t like what’s happened to him.

  ‘If it gets any worse, I’ll get Bryn to strap it for me. It’s only what they’d do, anyway.’

  ‘He still here?’

  ‘Yeah, sleeping on the sofa. Couldn’t face the wifey giving him grief. Lads stayed, had a bit of a session. What happened to you? I can’t remember that much . . .’

  ‘Bryn gave the cabbie money to take me on home.’

  I look through the glass door to the living room. A couple of the guys are in there, sleeping on cushions. A faint reek seeps out: beer and cigarette smoke. All the bottles and cans have been removed and the ashtrays emptied. The magazines on the table are in a squared stack, spines facing out, even if they are porn. Even though his life is in chaos, Rob likes things to be neat. When he lived at home, he’d put his toiletries out in a row on the bathroom windowsill; he even had creases in his flannel. Everything had to be just so; he’d go spare if anyone so much as nudged his razor so it lay at a different angle. Martha thinks he’s got OCD – obsessive–compulsive disorder. Mum put it down to wanting to be tidy.

  It suited him living with Grandpa. He was the same way. It’s probably something to do with being in the Army. Grandpa’s stuff is still about the place. His clock is on the mantelpiece, stopped on the day he left the house. Rob won’t wind it. Or perhaps he can’t be bothered. Grandpa’s souvenirs are arranged on the shelf above the telly with his books on military history. Rob keeps them dusted and polished, along with some of Gran’s ornaments: a pair of pottery dogs, a shepherd and shepherdess, little china baskets where she used to keep sweets for us. Grandpa only kept a few of her things, enough to remember her by. What Mum didn’t want, he sent to Oxfam. Strange to think that they are all still here and he’s not coming back.

  ‘I better get going.’

  ‘Yeah? Say “hi” to Alan for me. Sure you don’t want a beer?’

  ‘Nah, I’m good.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  He goes to the fridge to get another can. He looks vulnerable, dressed just in boxer shorts, his nakedness brutally revealing. He’s got a lot of tattooings, varying from unrecognisable squiggles to regimental insignia and more elaborate designs that aren’t finished, as if he got bored halfway through, or came to and left the tattooing parlour, but it’s not the gallery on his arms and chest which attracts the eye. His right leg is quite a bit shorter than the left. He wears an insert in his shoe, so normally it’s almost undetectable, but barefoot it’s obvious. It gives him a rolling gait, the limp very pronounced. He goes back to the counter and lights a cigarette, stretching out the bad leg. It still hurts him. Aches all the time. The crossed rifles, the snipers’ insignia, are high on the thigh. Below that the scars show in silver-white lines, up and down like zips. The muscles are twisted, puckered and pitted where the pins went in, the skin ridged and patched with transplanted flesh. I’ve seen him rage and cry with frustration, but through all the months of treatment he never complained about the pain. He just endured it. He’s brave – no doubt. But the other stuff, the stuff he wants to do but can’t, never will be able to, that’s getting to him now. I want to help, but there’s nothing I can do.

  I don’t know what to do about him, or the sadness I’m feeling, so I just say, ‘See you,’ and I go down the hall past Grandpa’s photographs of past wars. Him and his mates perched on tanks and armoured cars, grinning at the camera, arms round each other, fags dangling. The photos are faded; all the young men in them are old now, dead or gaga.

  ‘Yeah, see you, bro.’

  I leave him staring at his laptop, sucking on a can of beer, his other hand moving as he brings the picture back again. He looks vulnerable. Lonely. His life is fucked and he’s going nowhere, living in an old man’s house, surrounded by an old man’s stuff, in a geriatric cul-de-sac. He hasn’t adapted well to civilian life. He hasn’t adapted at all. He’s stopped going to counselling. He refuses to take advantage of any kind of rehabilitation package. ‘Lots of lads got it worse than me,’ that’s what he says.

  He spends his time staring at weapon sites, wishing for his old life, wanting to be looking through his Schmidt and Bender standard sight, targeting the bad man, getting the cross hairs on the Taliban. He’s only happy when he’s hanging out with his mates, but there’s a space between him and them now. Soon, they will be leaving, going back to a life he can no longer share.

  I turn away quickly. I wouldn’t want him to see me looking. It feels like spying. He wouldn’t want me to see him that way. From down the long hall, he’s just a dark shape receding, sitting motionless, silhouetted against the strong sunlight like a man in a photograph. His face is as familiar as my own in the mirror, but he looks like someone I no longer know.

  Chapter 12

  Jimbo was here just now peeking at what I was doing – you do – don’t you, when someone has a laptop open in front of them. Can’t help it – human nature. He’s thinking I’m looking at porn. That’s what soldiers do, right?

  But it’s not what I’m looking at – I’m looking at the Barrett. I’m thinking what it would be like to use it – to be up on a ridge sighting on something a mile or more away in the rocks and sand and little scrubby trees covered in dust, everything milky brown or shades of grey – with the dust and the wind blowing g
ritty in your mouth and in your eyes. Always the wind blowing – sometimes hard – sometimes soft – have to compensate for that. Sighting in the cross hairs – hearing the sound of my breathing, then the loading and the shot booming even through the ear defenders – sending birds scattering up into the sky so he looks up to see why and in that beat of a second the bullet rips right through him – pieces of him flying everywhere. He’s blown right off the ridge like a suit of clothes. Then the echoes are bouncing off the mountains further and further – growing smaller and smaller until there’s only the wind again and me lying still – part of the landscape – wrapped in a sniper smock sprayed to look like the terrain – stuck with dust and sand and dead twigs and branches that rattle as you move into position like a ghost in a ghostly land. No moving around – just hours and hours of keeping still and waiting – then POW!

  Yeah that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m a sniper – that’s what I do.

  Sniping is a special thing. You have to be a good shot – that’s a given – and it’s not like you can’t see the target – can’t see his eyes and that. You can. Sights you got now – you can see his acne scars. You watch ’em so long you get to know ’em – but you have to be able to separate yourself off – not think of him as another human being. He’s the target – that’s it – tough shit. It’s like hunting – you have to enjoy the tracking and the killing – but I don’t think that you are supposed to enjoy it quite as much as I do.

  Best thing is when the target don’t know you are there – one minute him and his mates are milling about their camp brewing up chai and he’s standing there with his AK in his mitt – the next the side of his head goes fitzz in a cloud of red mist. He don’t even have time to look surprised and the others haven’t got a clue. The shot is echoing all around – or you’ve used a silencer so no one knows where the fuck the fire is coming from – and they all start running about and as they do you drop another one and another and they’re going down like puppets with their strings cut before they can find any kind of cover.

  I love it when that happens.

  That’s not always how it goes of course. It can go the other way. Sometimes the operation goes to shit.

  The bad guys have got some useful kit.

  You could be set up in a position and the guy right next to you gets blown away by one of theirs with a Russian Dragunov. Or could be you get caught in the open. Nothing you can do as the steel core bullet rips right through the helmet and takes off the top of the skull and half his face with it so it’s no longer Lt Johnny Boy Williams I’m looking at just a mess of blood and white chunks of bone. We’re on patrol – a hearts and minds mission. He’s been showing me pix of his girlfriend on his phone – she’s hot. I look up to the compound we’re supposed to visit. There’s an old doris chucking out water and kids playing and goats wandering about. Seems safe enough. We get out and suddenly there’s no one about. Even the goats have buggered off. Johnny Boy is still grinning – thinking about his girlfriend no doubt – and there’s a crack like wood snapping and he’s thrown back and away from me. Could’ve been you. That’s all I’m thinking to myself, cos it’s not him any more, is it. And I’m glad it’s not me. So glad. I drop down on one knee. He was a good lad and a good mate not like the other Ruperts. The interpreter ain’t got out of the Land Rover – he’s lying flat in the back. I don’t blame him for that. Silly fucker who slotted Johhny bobs up to see if he’s done damage – so I get him right enough, then another has a look – they are so fucking stupid. I get him, too.

  I figure there’s a nest of them in there and I leave Johnny where he’s fallen. No help for him now and I’m charging up the hill towards their mud shithole of a compound and it’s like I’m Kevlar-coated. I can hear bullets zipping all around me – see them kicking up the red dust and splintering rocks – but I keep firing. I kill every fucker in there because they knew.

  It’s quiet now. I go back to Johnny and wait until Bryn and the rest of them find us. Bryn goes up to the compound. When he comes back he says nothing at all but calls in a strike and it all don’t matter because next minute a Spectre gunship flies over and none of them are there any more. There’s just a big ball of flame billowing out and nothing left but a black hole in the ground. But when I sleep they are alive again – the old man in the corner and the women with their faces covered whimpering and the little Taliban snappers with their soft sad eyes looking.

  I don’t sleep very often. We don’t talk about that – never talk about that. Sleep like a baby, me. That’s what we say to each other. Nothing about what we see when we close our eyes at night. Bryn knows though – he knows what I see because he was there.

  Him and the lads are still here but they will soon be going. I don’t want them to go. When they’re here – it’s like there’s a barrier between me and what I fear. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t fear no one. Nothing outside me. What’s frightening is what’s inside myself – that’s why I want them to stay. But then part of me can’t wait to see them going out the door so I’m left on my own again – cos that’s the only way to be.

  Bryn says that I need treatment – to go back and get help. Joking like – always joking – we are always joking – but I know he’s serious. Been there done that I tell him – and it’s no help because there is no help.

  You can’t be with your family no more – they just get on your nerves. No matter how much you want to be home, when you’re there everyone drives you mental. They don’t understand – can never understand. People become unreal – life becomes unreal. The only answer is to go back and be with your mates cos they’re the only ones who can understand you. But if there’s no going back there’s nowhere to go and you don’t even want to be with them any more – you don’t want to be with anyone. It’ll take more than counselling to stop me from going where I’m heading.

  Chapter 13

  ‘This fascist state means to kill us all!

  We must organise resistance. Violence is

  the only way to answer violence.’

  Gudrun Ensslin

  I took his phone. It was lying on the bench between us. He was pretty much out of it and it must have fallen from his pocket. I could have given it to his brother, but I didn’t. I put it into my bag.

  That was careless, leaving it on a bench like that where anyone might find it. You can tell a lot about a person from his or her phone: what apps are there, photographs, texts sent and received, whose numbers they have in the directory, favourites, websites they access, emails, depending on what kind of phone it is, even what kind of tariff someone is on, all these things are very revealing, the photographs and video footage especially. A mobile phone is personal, your life in a capsule. You should look after it. He hasn’t even locked it and it isn’t password-protected which is unforgivably sloppy of him. I look at the photos he’s got. The video clips. Interesting stuff. He’s a killer. They all are. I transfer what I want on to my laptop.

  The only phone I’ll own now is a cheap pay-as-you-go. No numbers. They are in my head. No photographs. I delete every message that I send or receive.

  I hadn’t seen Charlie for a while. He tells me that getting sacked was the best thing that could have happened to him. Made him focus on his art. Now he’s a Real Artist, not just a part-time teacher, and he’s doing well. Beginning to sell. He suggests we go back to his place, so he can show me the work he’s been doing. That’s what he says but I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that there will be more to it. I go along anyway. He’s got a new flat. A loft space in a converted granary.

  He shows me the studio, the work he is doing now. It’s very political. Photographs from the London demonstrations merge with images from other countries, burnt-out tanks and buildings, car bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan. The Palestinian flag, the Star of David and the Stars and Stripes merge into one another, torn, blackened and scorched. One huge canvas shows soldiers, their faces erased, bleeding into a reddened landscape, surrounded by scenes o
f dereliction and devastation. A closer look shows a row of burnt out high street shops; British fields turned into barren no-man’s-land, a dead waste ground ribboned with black seeping oil.

  ‘That’s oil. See?’

  ‘Yeah. I get that.’ I nod slowly, walking up to the canvas and stepping back again, in a suitably admiring way. ‘Powerful stuff.’

  He grins, arms crossed. Pleased with the effect his work is having, my response.

  ‘I want to show what’s happening in the world and what’s happening here. Fuse the two together. Literally bring it home to people. What we are doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza – the Intifada – the destruction and violence we are causing.’

  That’s enough preliminaries. He pours some wine and we take it through to the bedroom. Maybe he’s drunk too much, but it takes him a long, long time. I drift off, and I’m thinking about my appointment with Armani guy. I tell him I want to study Politics. Not here, abroad somewhere. I’ve opted for History, Economics, French and German. ‘Can you do it in a year?’ he enquires, fingers steepled, head on one side, looking doubtful. ‘Your previous subjects were Art, English and Drama.’ Mother looks impatient, like my new choices are just a fad. What does she care? If I fail everything, she’d be glad.

  ‘Of course I can,’ I say and go on to tell him exactly why. He taps a few notes into his Mac but he’s not really listening. He sits back, manicured fingers steepled again.

  ‘By opting for us, you’ve made a wise choice. We now have Academy status and will soon have a splendid new sixth form and community college, the best in the area. Let me give you the virtual tour of the facilities . . .’