The Dreams of Max & Ronnie (3 page)

The Beast of Britain points. – Up there. On the ridge, by the Hyddgen plaque.

Winston emits a bass bark.

– What're you laughing for?

– I'm not, Winston says, shaking his head so that his hat wobbles and waves on his bald and shining dome. – How can I laugh, sir? How can I laugh when I see that scum such as these are protecting this island after such fine men protected it in the past?

This pokes Ronnie into reaction. He balloons his chest, clenches his fists at his sides, grits his teeth, gulps spit, unleashes a blaze in his face, feels the weight in his buttocks that often prefigures violence and opens his mouth to roar and what comes out is a squeak: – I say, steady on, man! How dare you speak so, sir! I've a ruddy good mind to give you a bunch of bally fives!

 
Robert and Rhys watch the twitching Ronnie. His eyeballs frantically dart beneath his clenched eyelids and his fingertips flicker and he mutters and gurgles in his throat. He's been asleep since yesterday; Robert and Rhys caught some sleep themselves, a few hours' worth, without the use of Red Helen's medication, and they've eaten a breakfast of toast and tea and are now watching morning TV whilst Red Helen herself sleeps upstairs in her bed. Whenever she moves in her slumber, the creak and groan of the bedframe can be heard through the ceiling.

– He must be having one
mad
dream, Rhys says. – Think we should wake him up?

– No. No telling what was in that pill. Best just to let it leave his system.

The Jeremy Kyle Show
is on television. Today's topic is Hooligan UK.
And next up, ladies and gentlemen, we
meet a man who's proud to call himself the ‘Beast of
Britain
'. Wild applause and booing. A youngish man swaggers on stage. He's on camera. Regardless of
why
he is, he just
is
, and his face shows that he feels alive. This is where he deserves to be. In the spotlight. This is his entitlement. Number-one crop to his skull and a tight goatee with a tinge of red.

– State of this bastard, Robert says. – No wonder he shaves his head. If his beard's anything to go by he's a fucking jinj.

– Beast of Britain? Rhys snorts. – Bellend of Britain. State of him.

Ah love mih countrih. Simple as that.

So that means you should go abroad and smash up other
countries?

Ah love mih countrih. Me and mih merts, we love us
countrih.

The island's great and warrior past is drawn on; Churchill is mentioned, Montgomery, the heroes of the Somme, El Alamein, Dunkirk. At the first mention of Blair and Iraq the TV screen crackles with interference and Rhys says: – I'm bored of watching this fucking idiot. What else is on? and he starts to flick through the channels with the remote.

Ronnie sleeps on, on his lucky moo-cow rug. Ronnie dreams on, on his lucky moo-cow rug. In the filthy cottage dotted with cat shit and reeking of cat piss and the stale and fatty phantoms of old oven-ready meals and fag smoke and unwashed material, Ronnie goes on dreaming his strange dream. In the cottage in the village, in the village that a passer-through would swear was deserted because of the pub with boarded windows like glaucoma'd eyes, because of the shoplessness, because of the chapel now someone's second home, because of the utter lack of human activity and interaction in its narrow lanes where only small birds chirrup and insects rattle in the overgrown hedges, where nobody leaves their houses, where people die old and alone behind windows with never-drawn curtains, where people, if they ever
are
glimpsed, are seen as mere blurs behind the darkened windows of their Hi-Lux turretless tanks, where no children play in the gardens or streets, where no one stops to chat on their way to the shop because there is no shop to go to and where no drink and welcome wait in the pub because there is no pub to go to, in this village, this wraith of a village, on the lucky moo-cow rug, Ronnie dreams on.

 
Britain's Beast glowers at Ronnie. – Why're you talking like that?

– Like what?

– Like some posh bastard. All fucking lah-de-dah. Think you're an officer, do yeh? Sandhurst or something, is that it?

Ronnie just shrugs. Doesn't say anything.

– Well you're not. You're a soldier. That's all you are. A soldier from some council estate and you're cannon fodder like people like you have always been. You're first to face the guns. Always are. First face the Republican Guard or the mujahideen will blow off belongs to you. Understand?

The dream-Ronnie raises a dream-hand to touch softly his dream-face. The Beast leans to one side and spits.

– Anyway. See that ring that feller's wearing?

– What feller?

– That grinning gimp next to Winston. See his ring?

Ronnie squints. Sees a chunk of metal glinting on the sober-suited man's hand, a big ring bearing a symbol, coded shibboleth, badge of belonging.

– What about it?

– Well, it's said that if you have one like it, then you'll remember everything you've seen here tonight. In fact, juskers you've
looked
at it means that you'll remember everything you've seen.

Ronnie thinks. – So what? What the hell does that mean?

The Beast thinks too. – Dunno, to be honest with you. Fuck all, really. Like everything. But I was told to tell you that, that's all.

Ronnie sees a troop approaching the stream. Quieter than the others, dressed more neatly or if not that then with a self-conscious air of dressing down; artfully-torn jeans, wardrobe by Oxfam Irony Pour L'Homme. Some of them are talking quietly to each other; others shout histrionically in a look-at-me-
please
way.

– Who are these?

– These are some of the people who are sending you to war. Who think that you should go. And while you've gone to bleed in a desert they'll write articles about how brave you are and how necessary your sacrifice is. They're soldiers, too; in each battle, they bring up the rear. True, that may be 6,000 miles or so behind the fighting, the bullets and the blood, but nevertheless. They also serve who only stand and wait, ey?

Ronnie's eyeballs hurt, dazzled as they are by the redness of that troop. Each horse, red. Each ineffectual and unemployed spear and sword, red. Colour of blood spilled but not theirs, no, never theirs, and they glance once at Ronnie and his companions then look away and set to making an encampment above the ford. In a couple of minutes Ronnie can hear them tapping away on laptops and squawking into mobile phones.

And here comes another phalanx, again approaching the ford. Jeez, thinks Ronnie, the whole country is here. The entire British Isles has come to gather at this spot. The horses move as one in a canter with the huffing rhythm of a steam train and they are white, bright white, with a standard red cross painted across their powerful chests. White as the lily, red as the rose. Ronnie observes them and sees one of their number break away and trot high-stepping through the waters of the ford so that water splashes up onto Winston and his companions. Top-hatted Winston sighs in despair and studies the hissing end of his doused cigar then throws it away and the grinning man looks down at the wetness Pollocking his shirt front and shouts: I say! but the rider ignores him. Then one of the watchers in the ford who has been practising strokes with a cricket bat steps forward and whacks the horse an almighty belt across its nose with the bat. The horse doesn't flinch. Made of concrete and steel. But the rider then makes to draw his sword and asks: – Why'd you give my 'orse a slap? Cruelty to animals, that is. Good mind to get the bloody law on you, I have.

– Well, why are you splashing water all over your betters? The man indicates the dripping trio. – Show some respect. Look at them. They're sodden.

The rider releases the handle of his sword, sneers, and turns away. Then trots away. Re-wetting everyone around him once again.

Ronnie looks up at the Beast of Britain. – Who was that?

– A young man considered to be the best and most accomplished in the kingdom.

– Where's he from?

– The middle of England.

– And the bloke who smacked his horse? Who was he?

– Just some cunt.

The man with the cricket bat spins. – Oh I am, am I? I'll have you know I fought at Mametz Wood. What have
you
ever done? What have
you
ever done to protect this ancient democracy?
You're
the cunt, sir.

At this, a man with regal bearing detaches himself from the throng and declares that he fought ‘knee-deep in the blood of my friends' at Passchendaele so that, today, so many people could come together in so small a space. And that he finds it odd that those who have been selected for the Battle of Basra should be sunning themselves on the banks of this pretty ford.

– No spine, the man says. – No backbone. No moral fibre. Tyranny rages in the Middle East and you sit here enjoying yourselves. The country's under threat and you loll about on the banks of a river sunning yourselves. You: isn't that right?

He points at the grinning man who stands and declares solemnly: – I have it on reliable intelligence that weapons of mass destruction can be deployed by this maniac within forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes, gentlemen. This maniac threatens the peace and stability of the world. My intelligence has compiled a dossier.

The mounted man smirks. – Hear that? Less than an hour. Not a moment to lose. Quick smart!

And he trots off.

– Who was that, Beast of Britain? Ronnie wants to know. – And how come he was allowed to speak like that to his leaders?

– I told you; cos he's a cunt. And a cheeky one at that.

The Beast leans to one side of his steed and with one arm scoops Ronnie up and places him behind him on the horse and for that moment Ronnie remembers what it was like to be an infant, nurtured and protected by people bigger than himself. Safe and guarded, but with a buried sense of outrage at his submission to the kinetic whims of others. He wants to suck his thumb. He jiggles loosely on the trotting horse as they set off towards a long, low mountain on the horizon like a bed for a Titan but halfway across the ford the Beast halts the horse and turns and Ronnie sees the valley he is leaving, the valley scattered with people, and notices a new troop of men all arrayed, men and horses alike, in stars white on a blue background and red-and-white stripes slashed across banners held aloft and on horses' flanks. He sees the grinning man snap immediately to attention and he asks the Beast who this new troop is. What they might represent. Which country they are from.

– Yanks, says the Beast. – Septics. See the way Winston's mate is licking their arses? He'd do anything they ask him to. He's a creep.

Ronnie sees the grinning man on his knees in the ford genuflecting and grovelling before this new troop. Sees, too, yet another army approaching down the valley, flying banners green and white on which a red dragon statically roars.

– And these, the Beast says, – are your country-men. Them without hope or future who signed up cos there was sod all else for them to do and now they're gunner go and get their legs blown off by IEDs in the desert thousands of miles away from their homes. Just like you.

At the arrival of this new troop, the grinning man rises from his knees. The lead rider asks him a question but he turns away and follows the other troop, the one lit up with stars and scored with stripes. Follows them wherever they go. The Beast watches him do this and then shakes his head in what seems to Ronnie to be disgust or shame or despair or a mixture of all three.

They ride on. The distance they travel is a short one but it appears to encompass great tracts of the country, villages disparate but made similar by their shared air of abandonment and desolation. All pubs shut, all shops closed down, all private houses barri-caded tightly and securely against the world outside them. Ronnie sees net curtains twitch, glimpses faces curiously afraid at cracks in curtains and shutters and doors. Signs in driveways reading just two things; either For Sale or No Turning. Sees a huge troop behind him, following himself and the Beast, which has caught up with them by the time they dismount at the foot of the long mountain and amongst which there arises a terrible din, a clanging racket, discordant music to accompany the swirling of the crowd, the men moving randomly it seems, breaking against each other like waves or as if some whirlpool at their centre is spinning them out to the edges then pulling them back in again. Chaos it is. And there's a rider, another rider, separate from the main crowd, unhelmeted so that Ronnie can see his smirk atop the erect board of his back and discern the colours of his tabard, a red cross on a background of white.

– What's going on, Beast? Is the host running? Are they scared of something?

– Scared? Christ, man, these people are scared of nothing except being undistracted. They'll never shy away from a fight but are terrified of being left on their own with nothing to do but think. No, all it is, they're fighting to get a glimpse of that rider, there. They're desperate to see him. Touch him if they can.

– Why?

– Because he's famous. He once sang a song about angels. These people have been told over and over again that he's brilliant so they believe that's just what he is and they want to bask in the glow they think he gives off.

The smug man trots around the thrashing crowd, not once looking at them but obviously relishing their desperation to be near him. Ronnie notices that some in the crowd are attacking others who they believe might be enjoying a better view of the rider than themselves; he sees one man kick the calves of another man then use his fallen body as a viewing platform; sees another grab at the collar of a man in front of him and drag him down to be trampled and crushed in the mud. Watches another try to yank out the tall spiky hair of the man in front of him; he grabs a handful and pulls, straining, and the other man screams as his scalp begins to rip above his right ear and come away from the skull bone. And meanwhile the smirking rider circles, circles, back upright, eyes fixed on some distant ideal that only he can see, gulping himself and finding every last morsel absolutely delicious.