Sleepwalkers (17 page)

But I’ve just remembered something. Dinner of champions. The words come from cragged teeth, a northern brogue. A tall, muscled man standing on rough rocks in the blinding sun. Jacko. ‘
Dinner of champions, man,
’ he spits out with a laugh as he gazes down at the barren wasteland below us. He wears a soldier’s uniform. He is Sergeant James McFarlane. He is my colleague and friend. I am a soldier.

Before Edward leaves the room, I call out to him – a blurt of shock:

‘I was in Iraq.’

He looks at me and sees my surprise. I notice his fingers start to twitch, like he’s excited.

‘Well, then.’

‘I was a soldier. I remember … something.’

‘A dream?’

‘No. Real. I have a friend.’

A friend. Jacko.

Edward looks at me and frowns and walks away. I’m not
sure what his problem is, but I’m too wrapped up in this to worry. A hand has reached out to me from the darkness.

*

I walk to a bus stop at the far end of town rather than the one nearest the B&B. I wait half an hour then take a small, bumpy trip, away from the coast and inland, where I make two more changes. My map says I should be fifty miles from Edward’s place now and I think that’s safe enough. I stop in the nearest town and find an internet cafe. It’s near the train station, on a run-down road with a youth hostel and an offlicence. I’m nervous of going in and find myself wandering around the town for ages before I’m ready.

A young man with an aggressive haircut and loads of piercings sits at a desk. He’s reading a book. It’s one of those big, thick classics by some dead writer that I don’t know. I ask if I can use a computer and he’s well polite in response; shows me a monitor, tells me the rate and that I should come back and pay when I’m finished. I sit down and am pleased that the guy can’t see what I’m looking at. My hands pause over the computer. I glance back and catch the lad’s eye before he slumps back into his novel.

I type the words into the computer, faltering. Sergeant James McFarlane. There are thousands of results and my initial excitement dies quickly – too many people with the same name. I limit the search to the UK, and after a couple of false starts I find him. His face pops up at me with a cheery grin that takes my breath away. It’s him. Smiling at me. Jacko. Mate. Fuck!

I get the details in bits and bobs: his retirement from the army, his injuries and commendations. There’s a photograph of him with two young children, in full dress. One of the kids
bashfully holds up a medal. I never got to spend much time on the computer at home. Family life was always too distracting and I’m amazed by how much you can find with a few finger taps. I look at my friend and old memories bubble up. I suddenly remember sitting facing him in the back of an open truck, with other guys around. He’s telling a story about sex with some tough nut’s daughter – everyone’s laughing, we’re waiting to go. We’re going to fight. He’s telling the story so everyone can hear, but it’s really just for me. We are best friends. He’s joking that he’s going to a combat zone because it’s safer than facing this bird’s dad. At least he can carry a gun out there …

I stare at the screen: Jacko smiles right back. I am giddy with the rush of old feelings. I have no real sense of the man, but I’m trembling at his grin and the faint memory of his matey laugh. I have to find him.

I find a website which tells me it can do what I want, but I need to pay. It’s only five pounds, but I don’t have a credit card. I go to the lad at the desk who laughs at me. You can get a free trial for a week. Apparently that’s what everyone does. He shows me how to set up a free email address and then after a few clicks I’m in.

‘Where have you been?’ the lad asks. I think I get away with it by telling him I’m in my forties. But the question ruffles me. Where have I been?

The website does exactly what I ask and I get an address ridiculously quickly. I scribble it down on a piece of paper then delete all of the websites I’ve visited. I stand and go over to pay.

‘Thirty quid, then,’ he says, stretching.

‘What?’ I’m appalled. The price he’d quoted was five pounds per hour.

‘Six hours. Thirty quid,’ he says, as though I’m being difficult. I glance at my watch. Jesus Christ, he’s right, it’s late. I glance outside – it looks dark out there. I hand him the money without speaking and turn for the door, panicking. ‘See you then,’ he calls out sarcastically as I push through the door.

I’ve lost hours in that room and I don’t understand it. Have I really been so wrapped up in that computer that I’ve not noticed the time passing? It doesn’t seem possible. My neck is sore and I’m scared again. It’s dark, it’ll take me hours to get back to Edward’s place on unfamiliar roads and I don’t trust my mind. All I have is some cash – not enough cash – and an address for someone I may have once known but who may no longer live there. I thought I was over this, but now that the fear scrapes away at me I feel all of my old horrors all too well.

I duck into a back alley and hurry along, away from that place. I’m bursting with fear and need to get rid of it. I need to punch my way out of it. I want to mug someone. Jesus. I want to hit someone, steal something, hurt someone. Somehow that is going to make me feel better. I try to think about this rationally, but there’s a woman on her own, right there, dropping her keys onto the pavement as she’s about to enter her house. And I find myself walking towards her.

She turns to look at me as I get to her. She’s pretty, a face that’s open and trusting. The door is ajar and the house is dark inside. She’s alone and if I do this now, no one will catch me. I feel like I’ve done this before. I look at her and I can see that she’s scared.

‘I’m sorry,’ I stammer. I’m about to hit her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. She’s not moving, it’s like she’s waiting for me to do it, get it over with. The rage is still there, pumping inside me, urging me on. Her handbag will have money in it. There will be other stuff worth stealing in the house. She’s well dressed. Easy meat. My ears are pounding, I feel saliva in my mouth, I can taste the urge to kick and punch and break.

I turn my back on her. I don’t walk away, but I turn my back on her and I’m breathing fast. She hasn’t moved. Get inside, please, get inside you silly cow.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks. Oh God.

I manage to nod. ‘Yeah, fine, thank you. Sorry. You, er, I thought you were someone I knew.’ I’m calming down. I’m not going to do it. I find myself walking away. I hear her door shut. Thank fuck.

I sit on a quiet bus and stare at my reflection in the dark glass. I’ll be back at Edward’s in an hour or so and am now miles from her. My face is blurred and distorted in the dirty glass. I stare at my wonky reflection, watch it smudge and smear as it stares back at me. It seems to be grinning. I lean in close, whispering to it: Who am I? Who am I? The answer seems to be coughed up from the depths of the engine and the tree branches that scrape the top of the bus, a slow repetitive rhythm that croaks out an answer.

Follow me and you’ll see. Follow me. You’ll see.

*

It’s late and quiet as I walk through the back streets to Edward’s house. You can hear the waves, but the air here is trapped between the buildings and everything smells foul, like it’s all slowly rotting away with the salt and the damp. I’m calmer now, and
although I stop regularly and check to see if anyone is following me (they’re not), I do it as a precaution, not through fear. I’m a military man. I try to remind myself. Try to give myself the swagger of the squaddie but find I’m just walking like a man with constipation. I slip into the house. It’s quiet. I was expecting Perry Como. I double-lock the doors behind me, untie my laces and lay my shoes by the door. Then I go looking for Edward.

He’s asleep in the main room, a near-empty glass on the table by the armchair. I think of leaving him be, but I’m still too twitchy from today. So I sit down, more heavily than I need to in the seat opposite and he wakes immediately. His eyes are glazed and I see he’s lost for a moment. Then his eyes focus on me and he smiles.

‘So how was your sleuthing?’

‘Interesting.’

He yawns, nods and stretches, reaches for his whisky glass. He looks at me – want one?

‘Why not?’ I nod back, and he goes to the shelf and pours two more meaty helpings.

‘Are you holding back on me for dramatic effect?’ he asks. ‘Cos, really, you’ve not got much competition for an audience, sonny.’

‘I think I know where he lives.’

‘So he’s real.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. You’ll visit him, things will fall into place. Maybe he’ll put you up. Start of your new life.’

‘You trying to get rid of me?’

‘No, that was my attempt at petulance. It’s as good as I can manage.’ He passes me my drink and settles back in his seat.
‘I was having a funny dream. Something about …’ he tries to remember, his eyes narrowing, ‘something about the kids and a swimming pool and …’ he waves his hand the way he does – forget about it.

It’s late, but he doesn’t ask the time. He doesn’t wear a watch. He’ll wake when he wakes. He runs his finger around the glass, frowns.

‘Something about Tabitha. She was little and grown up all at the same time.’ He lets out a little sigh. ‘Dreams. So your man.’

‘Yeah. He’s real. He’s …’ I dig out a piece of paper, hold it up. ‘He lives here, or he did. Probably still does.’

‘Soldier?’

‘Yeah. We served together.’

‘I like that word. You served, did you?’

‘You did.’

‘Didn’t feel much like serving to me.’

‘I can’t remember how it felt. No, that’s not true. I …’ I falter because there’s this big, imaginary glistening arm across my neck, pulling me backwards – strong, stinking of sweat. I look up at Edward, he’s watching me carefully. ‘I think I enjoyed it all a bit too much to call it service.’

‘Damn right,’ he smiles. ‘Best bloody years of my life. Did I just say that? Jesus Christ, I’m a bloody cliché!’ He coughs a rich laugh. ‘But they were. Except when we were being shot at. Or mortared.’ Another glug of booze. ‘Remember hearing that Thomas had been born while I was hiding behind a burntout car in Ulster. I couldn’t have been happier. We were running for our lives and laughing all the way.’

‘When my children were born,’ I say, ‘I remember being in the delivery room with Carrie, pacing about, useless, too big,
repeating everything the midwife said until Carrie had to scream at me to shut up.’

He laughs, but I’m quiet. The memory is too strong, too vital to be untrue. I want to get up and rush out of the door, go back to them all right this second.

‘Maybe you’re not a soldier after all.’

‘Maybe I’m not.’ My glass is refilled. The whisky swirls around the glass.

‘What are you like with a gun?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard.’ He gulps his down, pours more in mine. He’s watching me, chewing on a smile, a game up his sleeve.

‘I’ve never touched a gun,’ I say, but then there is, somewhere in my mind, a gun, a hand, my hand, my hand holding a handgun. Christ. ‘I’ve … okay … I think I …’

I try to remember more, but the mist thickens again. It drives me mad.

‘If you’re a soldier, then you know your way around a gun.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Shall we find out?’ He pushes himself to his feet with a grunt and leaves the room. I don’t move, I drink more, refill my own glass. It must be ninety degrees in here. I’m groggy from it all, from the day I’ve had. But then he’s back, looming over me, waving an old-fashioned military pistol in the air.

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Clean as a whistle. I know how to look after a weapon, young man.’

‘And I’m sure you know how to get a perfect crease in your trousers, but will you stop waving that bloody thing around, Jesus!’

He laughs, and his hands and fingers are twitching again the way they do when he’s excited.

‘Shoot something.’

‘Excuse me?’

He waves the gun around and I’m wondering just how bloody drunk the old coot is. He points it at a porcelain vase on the mantelpiece with a faded pattern of blue and white flowers.

‘Pow,’ he whispers, one eye closed. For a second I thought he was going to shoot the thing then and there. But he just giggles.

‘It’s loaded?’

‘Course it’s bloody loaded.’ And to prove it, he spins on his toes – with remarkable nimbleness – and shoots the bloody vase to pieces. The noise from the gun is unbelievable. I’m on my feet before I know what’s happened, screaming. But Edward’s just laughing. He looks at me, sees my disbelief, and doubles over with delight. ‘Did you see that?’ he cackles, ‘Did you bloody well see that!?’

‘Yeah, great, put it down, on the mantelpiece, there, that’s it, put it down will you?’

He does a shoe-shuffle dance, the gun held high in the air.

‘You’ll bring the bloody police round.’

‘No, no,’ he scoffs, but he will bring the police if he carries on like this. And I can feel irritation and fear bubbling up inside me. That rage again.

‘Edward. Stop this.’ Please stop, mate, please.

‘What? What’s the matter with you? I thought you said you were a soldier,’ he says, and walks over to fetch himself more whisky. He’s a stubborn git. No wonder his family left him. The booze inside me thickens and burns.

‘Edward. Put the gun down. I’m asking.’

‘Oh, you’re asking?’

‘Yeah.’

And my tone finally gets through his thick skin. He stops. Looks at me. Sees the way I’m standing. And in that moment he’s suddenly a frail old man again. He puts the gun down gently. Nods. There. See? I nod.

‘Thank you.’

We stand apart. He waits for my signal to let him speak in his own home.

‘Didn’t recognise you for a bit then,’ he says.

‘No.’

‘Didn’t see it before, but you’ve got a bit more to you. Bit of a tough nut.’

‘Yeah. Give it.’

He nods, grabs the weapon and shuffles quickly over to me. I could hold it by the nozzle and smash the butt against his chin. I could smash his jawbone, shatter it and leave him to die in this room right now. I take it from him and see him look at me with wary eyes. I take the gun and my hands dismantle and then reassemble the machine. I do it with hard, fast, effective movements. Old memories, hidden within my body. I should be excited or amazed, but this has happened too many times now. And I can feel my old self, too close to the surface, pushing up with closed fists, pushing and tearing his way out.