Meet with the prospect of death and life
flashes before your eyes, or so the myth has it. Meet with the prospect of
death and it’s more likely you’ll have a mind freezing, heart quickening, bowel
triggering moment. If my life flashed before my eyes, I can't have had much of
a life. I heard the shot. I heard its echo. Then silence. I felt my body go
limp. And nothing. Nothing. No memories, no recollections, no visions of my
past, nothing flashing before my eyes, not even the muzzle flash of the gun
discharging. Sitting in a garden where a lifetime of memories had blossomed …
and I was left in barren emptiness.
I've no idea how or why I pulled the trigger,
but the barrel must have been close to my face. The explosion half deafened me.
The muzzle flash singed my hair, the bullet crashed into the wall behind me,
ricocheted, then fell back onto the patio. And I dropped the whisky. It might
be the last bottle of malt I'd ever see, and I dropped it.
I sat, smelling the fumes, studying the
Humpty Dumpty pieces of broken glass. What was done was done. I couldn't put
the world back together again, not even my world. I slipped the safety catch
back on, and holstered my weapon. I couldn't end it. I wouldn't end it. Not yet
at least. Not without giving things one more try. Life, my life, all life, had
to go on. What I had to rediscover was the optimism I'd felt months ago.
No, my life didn't flash before me, but I was
left there in the loneliness of my memories, left to ponder the past, hoping it
might suggest some direction for the future, and that was something the Army
hadn't taught me to do. For ten years the Army had told me where to go and what
to do when I got there. It had fed me, clothed me, put a roof over my head,
even if it was sometimes a canvas one, or even a starscape sky. Now, there were
no more signposts, no orders posted on walls, no briefing sessions, no commands
to follow, no commands to give.
The further we left Houston behind, the more
optimistic we felt, despite the claustrophobia of that packed aircraft belly,
men and equipment jammed together, snoring and farting, the smell of hundreds
of sweaty, bad breathed bodies and unwashed socks, but still optimistic,
optimism emerging from the sense of relief that we were off the ground … that
we were over the sea … that we'd soon be home.
The fact that we landed near Paris didn't
diminish our optimism. We no longer had an ocean to cross! We could get home
from here! Nothing could stop us now. And then, three days in the rain,
huddling under tarpaulins and ground sheets on the airport runway. There was
some administrative problem … we weren't going straight back to Scotland, we
were being required to fulfil some short-term contract in London, but couldn't
get permission to land there, and the French were only too keen to get rid of
us.
Three days, and maybe twenty or more of the
men took off on their own, trying to make their way back to Scotland. Nobody
used the term 'desertion', nobody blamed them, most of us at least toyed with
the idea of following them … even me. We'd all had enough. None of us believed
we had anything to offer any more.
Ten years a soldier. When I first joined up
I'd tried to explain to my parents – I'd argued with Debbie for hours – I'd
tried to convince myself. The world, I insisted, needed revolution. Even after
the pandemics and disasters and the wars and civil breakdown, nobody except
religious fanatics was talking about Apocalypse.
Crazy to think back. If this was my life
flashing before my eyes, then it was subject to one hell of a delay, and the
painful sections seemed to be playing in slow motion. I watched the smoke drift
over the garden and thought back to those days arguing about my decision to
enlist. Nobody was thinking Apocalypse, I was arguing opportunity! The world,
not just the one we knew but the whole world, the whole world was falling
apart.
We needed a new world, we needed stability,
we need change, we needed revolution, we needed order, we needed a world where
power was in the hands of the people, a world without the corruption of the
rich and powerful, a world without the lies of capitalism or religion or
individuals skilled in selling charisma rather than values or ideals. Couldn't
soldiers, particularly Scottish soldiers, bring a message of hope and optimism
to the world, help people sweep aside the corruption, lies and institutions
responsible for our predicament?
We were a political nation. We were steeped
in belief in and debate about social justice. The new Scottish battalions were
dedicated to protecting human values and human rights, even if there had been a
struggle weeding out the old unionist dinosaurs. When we volunteered we knew we
would be asked to carry out duties on behalf of the United Nations, but we also
knew we served the interests of the Scottish people and Scottish Parliament,
not some medieval relic of a king, and that our international role meant we
would help restore order, save lives, return peace and tranquillity to distant
corners of the world, and give people control over their lives.
And we ended up killing. We ended up being
funded by an oil corporation struggling to stay alive but already in its death
throes. We ended up playing games with lives … and no longer just the lives of
dogs. We ended up killing and enjoying it, making a sport of it, ended up as
callous mercenaries.
Had I really been that naïve, had I really
been that idealistic? I'd argued that soldiering had to be transformed into
service to the community, service to the people, that soldiers had to stop
being Establishment flunkeys, touching their forelocks to kings and lords and
pretending that slaughter and sacrifice were really glory and 'tradition'. Debbie
had called me a fool, had cried. What was it she'd told me?
"You'll just be a uniformed overseer for
the slave owners. People don't realise they're slaves. The ruling classes pose
soldiers as heroes, pretend that they care about them and that their soldiers
are a vital link binding together people and rulers! If the people ever realise
they're slaves and try to escape their shackles, it's then they'll discover
that the heroes have only one real purpose, and that's to ensure the people are
kept in their chains."
And I argued my ideals, my dreams of political
soldiers coming together to free the world from tyranny, and what I couldn’t
tell her was that I loved her so much and wanted her so much, and that the only
hope I had of escaping the pain of not having her was to put half a world
between us. I was running away to forget, and, with a bit of luck, someone
would blow me up or gun me down and finally put her out of my mind.
Did I really think we could be a moral force?
Was it just a rationalisation of my flight away from her? If I'd had any real
conviction that we could be a moral force, a force for the good, well, that was
finally swept away by our time in Houston. It couldn't get worse after that,
could it?
That flight home … well, back to Europe. I
physically remained in uniform, but, mentally, I’d deserted. I wanted to be
back home, home, back to see my parents, back to see Debbie, back to somewhere
familiar, somewhere I didn’t feel like an outsider, like an invader, didn’t
feel tainted. The optimism of that plane, the optimism on that plane.
And then we went to London. The
disillusionment and disgust I’d felt about our tour in Houston was nothing
compared to the sense of revulsion I’d feel when they finally flew us to London
and immediately loaded us into a convoy of trucks. If I’d known, if I’d
guessed, I’d have run off while we were in Paris.
And staring at the azaleas did nothing to
relieve that memory. London? As we drove into and across the city along roads
virtually free of traffic, we were watched by hundreds of sullen faces. White
faces. We'd been travelling for half an hour when I realised that we hadn't
seen a black face, had scarcely seen anyone with so much as a tan. London was a
white city.
And so it went. As we drove across the city
we were watched by white faces. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but I grew
more and more conscious of the fact. And then we arrived at the football
ground, and I was summoned with the other officers for a briefing session.
We assembled in what had once been a car park
behind the stadium … in the days when people attended sporting contests, in the
days before the pandemics when people were not afraid to be part of a crowd, in
the days before such assemblies were made illegal.
We formed a semi-circle around the colonel
and a group of people in a mix of civilian and military clothing. They were all
white. Within minutes I was ashen-faced.
A Major Talisbrook, who described himself as
having some official position with 'England Rise Again', explained that we were
to be used as escort to a special train, and apologised, explaining that he
knew we wanted to get home to see our families but that we were the only intact
British unit available.
Several of us pointed out that we weren't
'British', that we were 'Scottish', that since Independence we had no
legitimate authority in England unless under a UN mandate … and the UN had
long-since imploded.
Talisbrook offered a patronising smile, as if
we were children who needed a moment's reassurance, then continued. We were to
act as escort to the special train which would transport the people who were
"temporarily accommodated" in the sports stadium. There were boats in
Southampton, apparently, waiting to repatriate them. It would probably take two
or three train loads to empty the stadium.
Even then, I don't think the penny had
dropped. Even then, we were preoccupied with the fact that it would be a few
more days before we could go home, a few more days before we could get back and
discover what had happened at home. Surely this was London's problem … whatever
it was.
We were thinking immigrants, thinking people
fleeing from France or Spain or Holland, people who had tried to escape
whatever horrors had befallen their own lands. And what? They'd shoved them into
a football stadium? There were plenty of empty buildings, plenty of empty
houses and flats. Had the civil authority broken down so badly no one was
capable of organising that?
Or maybe they'd just turned against the
foreigner. Send them back. Herd them together and herd them back across the
Channel. And, at the back of our minds, that nagging question … surely things
weren't this bad in Scotland?
And suddenly I was thinking about my gun
again. Would I hear the shot before it blew my brains out? I’d do it, I’d do
it, if only I could guarantee that life would flash before my eyes and not drag
out the painful passages. Could I not remember some place, some time when I was
happy? Oh, when was the last time anybody in this world was happy?
And I had to get up and do something. I
wandered back into the house, determined to make myself busy cleaning and
tidying. I had nowhere else to go, so I had to make the place habitable, had to
unload the supplies from my wagon outside, had to secure the building.
The kitchen had always been spotless, despite
my best efforts as a child and adolescent. Now, the pile of dirty dishes on the
draining board, the smashed mug on the floor, the splashed stains, the empty
soup tins, the discarded wrapping paper which had once concealed a piece of
butcher meat or a couple of potatoes obtained at the barter market, the empty
but spotlessly clean fridge and freezer, the scattered feathers of a plucked
pigeon or two, all testified to my mother's final days, bereft, abandoned,
hopeless, confused, slipping away. She'd kept a couple of bags of refuse inside
the house so they wouldn't be ripped open by the birds or attract stray cats
and dogs. There was so little to throw away these days, it was almost as if she
was creating a compost heap in the kitchen. Maybe that's what attracted the
first flies?
How long had she sat alone in that house,
listening to her cherished grandmother clock ticking away the last of her life?
I only had to look at the kitchen to imagine her, thin, fading, an energetic
and dynamic woman hopeless and alone, becoming increasingly desperate as her
physical and emotional resources ebbed away.
I’d found her on the floor. What? Had she
fainted, tripped, slipped, fallen? How long had she lain there unable to get
up? Or had it been quick? I hoped so.
Dad must have died some time before her. He
was arranged in their bed. Though his corpse was skeletal and discoloured by
the time I arrived, I could tell mum had washed him and tried to make him
comfortable, but the fluids from his body had drained and leached into the
mattress. She’d fought a losing battle trying to preserve the corpse. There was
little she could do. The armchair beside the bed testified to her sitting
there. I imagine she talked to him.
She'd started to leave a note for me. My name
was written at the top of a sheet of paper. "Sandy". And there was a
date, about six weeks ago. That was all. Did she assume I was already dead,
that this was a futile exercise? All my life she'd been the organised one, the
determined one, optimistic and alive, the battery which charged and re-charged
me and dad.
I found her in the toilet, collapsed, head
jammed beside the bowl. I threw up onto the already stained floor, then went
outside, still retching emptily, and cried. I thought I'd prepared myself for
what I might find. But I cried, and cried, then made myself busy, burying my
mother, dragging dad across the road, trussed up in that disgusting mattress.
Maybe my mother would have been outraged at
the idea of me setting fire to a bungalow, but she had always hated that one.
It was the ugliest wee building on the street. And Miss McCready had been the
neighbour from … . She'd been nosey, interfering, she'd complained about
anything and everything. Her front 'garden' was overgrown with weeds - the
seeds used to blow across and invade my mother's orderly domain. And Miss
McCready kept cats. Must have had a dozen or more at any one time.
Cats which prowled into my mother's back
garden – I sent a few flying with well-aimed stones … and one, a perfect shot
from my catapult, had its brains dashed out and just lay there, and I shook and
cried and my dad buried it and talked about learning a lesson in the importance
of life and how the taking of life should never become a casual or routine affair,
even if you were hunting for food.
When I was a child, I was convinced Miss
McCready was a witch, that she would turn me into a toad, or put me to sleep
for a hundred years. I used to run past her bungalow, used to race back into
the safety of my own home if I saw her out on the street or in her garden. My
mother constantly fought with her over the cats. She called her Spinster
McCready … "Women with cats," she'd say, "you mean
'spinsters'?"
I half expected to find Spinster McCready's
remains in her bungalow … half hoped she'd been eaten by her damn cats and that
a dozen little feline skeletons would be lying around her gnawed one, but when
I broke through the door, the house was empty and had been stripped off
anything useful.
So I build a pyre out of doors and wooden
furniture, and sacrificed some of my scarce petrol. Quite a satisfying blaze. I
really think my mother would have approved. I could imagine her standing
outside her front door, hopping from foot to foot, clapping her hands and
laughing, then helping herself to a glass of port and sausage roll as if it was Bonfire Night …
and then I remembered that it was my dad who was burning, not just Spinster
McCready's ugly bungalow.
Recalling the blaze, I walked back to the
front of the house and wandered out through the front door. Spinster McCready's
old place was well and truly ablaze. There were technicolor flames dancing around
a pirouetting exclamation mark of smoke, as if our old neighbour was finally
being erased and a huge punctuation mark stamped into the air to signal the
occasion.
But the weeds and bushes at the front had
caught. Small fires had started in the neighbouring front gardens. Although
there was scarcely a breeze to fan them, I hesitated for a moment. I didn't
want to set the whole street on fire. I didn't really think those few burning
weeds or hedges would pose any danger … but. And that column of smoke? It was
bound to attract the attention of the locals. I decided to do a quick recce,
and maybe stamp out a bit of the bush fire. I retrieved my carbine from the
kitchen and walked back out to cross the street.
And then I saw him. The cowboy. As I raised
my rifle to my shoulder, I wondered which of us was the faster draw … and which
the better shot.
