Read by Paul Clarke - Listen to full podcast
Thank God that’s over. I had to do it for Bonzo – I couldn’t let him down. A promise is a promise.
I might have been over the limit when I got up, so I went on the train instead of driving there. Everyone wants to see you when you’re home on leave; you can pretend that having a few drinks with them is a good idea. Then it’s drinking every night whether anyone wants to see you or not. It’s the only way you can sleep. You think you’ve got away from all that crazy stuff but it comes home with you.
I’d phoned Bonzo’s missus to tell her I’d be there about eleven. She was called Michelle. I got the bus into Manchester and the train from Piccadilly, through the old mill towns and over the Pennines. I tried to read the Mirror and thought about what I would say.
I looked around while she made tea in the kitchen: there was a picture of her and Bonzo’s wedding on the mantelpiece. She looked pretty but she’d put on some weight since then. The blond hair in the photo was a bit darker now and she looked older when she brought the tea in. I suppose the last few weeks hadn’t helped after she got the news about Bonzo. She called him “Mike” – I’d never heard anyone call him that. “Bonzo” suited him better than Michael Bonnington. Nobody in our squad was called by their real name – they were called things like Jacko or Bandit or Spacer.
“Is that little Michael?” I asked her, pointing to pictures of a young lad on the mantelpiece.
“Yes,” she said, sitting on the cream leather settee opposite me. “How did you know?”
“I’ve seen pictures of him before,” I said. “Mike used to carry pictures of you and Michael with him all the time.” If you’re gonna lie you should make it sound good, so I started with something she’d want to hear.
She poured two cups of tea into china cups – the sort you only use for guests. “He’s three now,” she said. “He’s at the nursery. I’ve got to collect him at half past two.” Thank God for that.
“Did you know Mike well?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Too bloody well. He was a pain in the arse on that last tour. “He was a great guy,” I told her. “One of the lads. One of us.”
“Had he been all right before… you know…” she said.
“Yeah,” I lied again.
“He wasn’t himself the last time he was home on leave,” she said. “He’d get upset about things – things that didn’t matter… and he’d stay up ‘til two or three o’clock ‘cos he couldn’t sleep. Some nights he’d shout things in his sleep and wake me up. And sometimes… when you talked to him… he wouldn’t be listening. And he smoked a lot more.”
Yeah, and it wasn’t just cigs. He wasn’t himself there, either. He sulked a lot and when he did speak he’d pick arguments with anyone – about things that didn’t matter out there, like politics and football. He’d accuse fellas of cheating at cards and moaned about food that had been good enough before. And he was smoking dope. It was everywhere out there – you’d see it growing at the side of the road. There was fields full of it: the locals sold it to make money. They couldn’t have smoked it all. The Yanks sprayed it with weed-killer from a ‘plane at first but they’d grow it somewhere else, so the Yanks gave up.
I told her, “Sometimes it gets you like that – the stress and the routine. You get so used to it that it feels strange when you come home.”
She had two hands round her cup and told me, “That’s what Mike said. But I thought it was more than that the last time he was home… he wasn’t his usual self.”
No, he wasn’t. Our sergeant reported him to the M.O. The shrink and psychologist assessed him but he wasn’t crazy enough to send home. Just crazy enough to be there. One of the local interpreters had a side-line selling dope and Bonzo was his best customer. He’d wave a joint at you and say, “Dope helps me cope.”
“Were you there, you know… when it happened?” Michelle asked me, still gripping her cup.
“I was in the same patrol but I didn’t see what happened,” I said. What’s another lie? “The fellas told me about it.”
He was stoned on patrol. One of us should have reported him but we’d seen fellas get away with it before. He wandered off the patrol line and there was a bloody great bang followed by grey earth coming down like heavy rain. Me and Spacer got to him first: when we could see him through the dust he was shaking on the ground and his legs were somewhere else. All that emergency first aid they teach you and it’s no bloody use. Spacer got a morphine shot out of his pack and stuck it in his arm. I looked for bleeding points to compress on what was left of his legs but there was just a ragged bloody mess. “It’ll be OK, Bonzo,” I lied to him. “The medics will sort you out.” He grabbed my arm; he must have seen the blood on my hands. His blood. He was shivering in the heat, getting paler and paler.
“What did they tell you?” Michelle asked.
I said, “It was all very quick and he didn’t know anything about it. He didn’t suffer, thank God.”
Yes he did. He squirmed about, gripping my arm. He had no colour, like an empty milk bottle.
“We had an arrangement,” I kept on lying, “that if anything happened to him or me, the other one would go and see their family and give them a message. A personal message.”
“What was that?” Michelle asked, leaning forward on the settee.
I said, “He wanted me to tell you that he loved you and little Michael very much.”
That wasn’t a lie – it’s all he said. I promised him I’d do it as his grip on my arm faded away to nothing but I don’t think he heard me. He’d stopped moving and he stopped breathing and everything went quiet. The dust had settled by then.
She put her hands to her face and started crying. I knew she would. I went and sat beside her and put my arm round her shoulders. I could feel her shuddering. I took some pink tissues from a box on the coffee table and gave her them to wipe her face. It took her a few minutes to settle and I put my arm down.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t let Mike down. I knew it would upset you… but I had to tell you.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “Thanks for coming to see me. It means so much.” She turned and gave me a hug. Her eyes were all red and watery; I couldn’t look into them.
“I keep thinking he’ll be back,” she told me, “like he’s still with us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.” Bloody right I do. Some nights I see Bonzo when I’m going to sleep – his mangled legs, his glassy face and his eyes rolling upwards. And there’s nights I wake up thinking my hands are still covered in blood and have to go and wash them.
She must have felt as awkward as I did: she got up and asked me if I wanted some dinner. She’d made moussaka and it wouldn’t take long to heat it up. I wasn’t hungry but it would keep her in the kitchen for a while so I said yes.
We sat in the kitchen eating moussaka; she could cook. I told her it was really good – no lie – and she said it was the least she could do. Everyone had been so kind to her and she hadn’t realised how much kindness there was until something like this happened. I finished my dinner and she made another cup of tea. We sat in the living room again and talked about Mike – well, she did: his motor bike, his CD collection, supporting Leeds United, his karaoke turn impersonating… who was it? I wasn’t concentrating but she wanted to talk so I just let her. It went on a bit. Then we ran out of things to talk about and it seemed very quiet. I could hear cars going past outside. She said, “Mike told me he’d seen too many people die. I’m sure it affected him.” Then she asked me, “Have you seen many people die out there?”
“A few,” I said, looking down at that beige patterned carpet. “Good lads – all of ‘em.” That interpreter didn’t think me and Spacer were such good lads after what we did to him.
“You must be really brave doing what you do out there,” she said.
“It’s the job,” I told her.
“That’s what Mike always said,” she replied, then she told me about all the people who had been to see her: the local paper, some other army widows, the army welfare people… she said everybody had been so nice, so helpful. And it was good to talk to someone who’d known Mike so well. And it was a relief, such a relief, to know he hadn’t suffered. We talked a bit more and at one point I thought she was going to get the photo albums out. I’m glad she didn’t.
She asked me what time my train was. I told her it was quarter to two and she said she’d give me a lift to the station and pick little Michael up on the way back - she didn’t want me to miss my train after coming such a long way.
Michelle drove me back into Leeds centre. In the car she said little Michael had got used to his Daddy being away and then coming home with loads of presents and spoiling him rotten but when she’d told him that his Daddy wouldn’t be coming home again he hadn’t realised what she meant. She asked me if my wife worried about me while I was away and I told her that I didn’t have a wife to worry about me any more, just my family. When she stopped outside the station she put her hand on my knee and thanked me for coming to see her – she really appreciated it. And if I wanted to call again I’d be very welcome. I put my arm around her shoulder and promised her I would. Then I got out and walked onto the station, looked at the times of the trains, and found the nearest pub.
There - I’ve done it. I don’t like telling lies… but a promise is a promise. There’s a train at quarter to two but I’ll be sitting here for a while yet. I’ll get the next one at three o’clock. There’s time for a couple of drinks between now and then. And maybe a couple more. And somewhere between here and Manchester I’ll tear up that envelope with Michelle’s address and phone number and chuck it out of the window. I won’t be seeing her again. And I hope – Jesus Christ I hope – that I won’t be seeing Bonzo again.
(c) Gordon Williams, 2017
Gordon Williams comes from Manchester and moved to Northern Ireland for the peace and quiet. His stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies and on walls and websites. Some have won prizes in competitions. Most haven't. As a part-time recluse looking to go full-time he has no social media presence.
Paul Clarke trained at the Central School and always got cast as a baddie or a monster. Or, for a bit of variety, a bad monster. Now a photographer, technologist and occasional performer, he finds the League's stories islands of relative sanity in his life.
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