Osama (15 page)

He could hear their voices through the thin ceiling as he walked into the front room, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was angry with himself. What the hell had he been thinking? He stood at the bay window, looking out at the street. Some kid was sitting on the front garden wall of the house opposite. Almost as a reflex action, Joe found himself recording his features: dark skin; greasy black hair; yellow, rotten teeth; late teens, early twenties. He was twirling an empty bottle of Coke in his right hand. For an instant he thought the kid was looking straight through the window at him.

‘Tell me what’s wrong?’

Caitlin had entered the room without Joe hearing.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said.

‘Try me.’

Silence.

Caitlin approached him. Her face had softened, and for the first time in days he felt his defences lower. ‘I heard the noises from that fucking game,’ he said. ‘I thought they were real.’

He stared at Caitlin, as though daring her to laugh. ‘You’re home now,’ she whispered. ‘With us.’

From the corner of his eye he saw movement on the street. Another kid had approached his mate with the rotten teeth. They shared a few words and walked off down the street.

‘Go and talk to him,’ she said. ‘Properly, Joe. He’s been aching to see you.’

Conor was still in his room, but had moved from the beanbag to the raised bed, where he had wrapped himself in his duvet and had a sketch pad open in front of him, and next to that the small grey elephant that had been his since he was a baby. Joe could never work out how one minute he could be playing war games, the next running his finger over the worn fabric of a soft toy. He had his mother’s colouring: copper hair and pale freckles on his nose and cheeks. In fact, he was as unlike Joe in looks as he was in personality. Joe approached the bed and glanced down. Conor’s gaze was fixed on the drawing he was making, two figures, scrappy and childlike. He refused to look up at his dad.

‘Hey, champ,’ Joe said quietly.

‘Hey.’ Conor didn’t look up as he spoke.

‘School OK?’

Conor shrugged, treating the question with the lack of interest it deserved.

‘What you drawing?’

‘Nothing.’ He looked embarrassed.

‘Mind if I keep that?’ It sounded to Joe like the sort of thing a good dad should say.

Conor shook his head and ripped the sheet from his pad, before handing it to his father.

‘Got a bit carried away there, I guess,’ Joe said, pocketing the picture without really looking at it.

Conor looked like he was pretending it didn’t matter, but Joe could see salt marks on his cheeks where the tears had dried. He put one hand on his boy’s bony shoulder; when, after ten seconds, it became clear that neither of them knew what else to say, he turned and headed for the door.

‘Why were you sitting in the shower like that, Dad?’ He sounded frightened.

‘Don’t worry about it, champ,’ Joe replied. He winked at Conor, wanting to change the subject quickly but not knowing how. Conor smiled thinly back. ‘Hey,’ said Joe, ‘it’s great to see you.’

‘You too.’

An awkward silence. ‘I’m going to talk to your mum, OK?’

‘OK.’

Joe left the room, closed the door and stood with his back to it.

Why were you sitting in the shower like that, Dad?

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he breathed to himself.

He went downstairs.

On the mantelpiece in the front room was a tinny little carriage clock. It chimed 4 p.m. As the fourth chime disappeared, the only sound in the room was the continued ticking of the clock. Joe shifted uncomfortably on the chintzy sofa that faced the window looking out onto the street. There was a matching armchair in the bay; sitting in the armchair, holding a red clipboard and a pencil, was a pretty young woman whose hair was tied back with a ribbon and who was patiently waiting for Joe to answer her.

Thirty seconds passed. The young woman repeated her question. Her voice dripped sympathy and it set Joe’s teeth on edge. He didn’t
want
sympathy.

‘How have you been sleeping?’

‘Like a baby.’

‘I see a lot of soldiers who have trouble with it.’

‘You ever tried sleeping in a war zone, Dr McGill?’

‘Are you telling me you haven’t been sleeping?’

‘I’m telling you I could do without the stupid questions.’

Dr McGill ticked a box on the paper clipped to her board.

‘Do you suffer from blackouts?’

‘Blackouts?’

‘Short periods when you can’t account for your movements. Temporary amnesia . . .’

‘I know what a blackout is.’

‘So do you?’

‘No.’

‘Your wife—’

‘Partner.’

‘Your
partner
told me she found you this morning sitting in the—’

‘I’m not suffering from blackouts, Dr McGill.’

The doctor inclined her head. ‘Anxiety attacks? Breathlessness? Hallucinations? Paranoia?’ she asked.

‘Is this going to take much longer?’

‘That depends on you.’

‘No, no, no and no.’

She didn’t look like she believed him. Maybe it was the way he refused to catch her eye.

‘I have to ask you this question, Joe,’ she continued. ‘Have you, at any point in the past six months, had any thoughts of hurting yourself in any way? Or worse?’

Joe couldn’t help himself looking scornful. Images flashed in his mind of operations out on the ground in Afghanistan. He saw himself creeping by moonlight through villages known to be overrun with insurgents; he saw himself cutting the throat of a seventeen-year-old Taliban recruit who he knew had laid an IED that had killed three British soldiers; he saw himself stuck inside the compound at Abbottabad, praying that the Americans wouldn’t see him. Thoughts of hurting himself?? His every thought over those six months had been about keeping himself safe. Hurting other people, maybe – but this earnest young doctor hadn’t asked about that.

‘No,’ he said. That, at least, he could answer honestly.

‘Are you sure? I understand that these things can be difficult to talk about.’

‘Look, love,’ Joe replied. ‘If I’d wanted to get myself hurt, I’d have had plenty of opportunity, believe me. Why don’t you fill in the rest of your boxes and get the hell—?’

He stopped.

Through the bay window, he could see something. The kid with the rotten teeth. He was sitting on the wall opposite again. His bottle of Coke was full now, and as he took a swig he kept his eyes on Joe’s house.

Joe stood up. ‘Wait there,’ he murmured.

He found Caitlin standing in the hallway, looking anxious. She opened her mouth to speak as Joe came out of the front room, but he hushed her sharply and edged towards the front door. There was a spyhole in the door – Caitlin had insisted on having it for when Joe was on tour. He peered through it. The street appeared distorted, like he was looking out from inside a goldfish bowl. He couldn’t spot the kid, but there was a flicker of movement on the edge of his vision.

‘Joe, what . . . ’

‘Stay where you are.’ Joe ran back to the kitchen, where he rummaged quickly in the drawer by the oven for a blade. He found a five-inch chopping knife and ran with it to the front door. He opened up and strode outside, the knife hidden behind his back.

But the kid had gone.

He looked up and down the road. Nothing.

Caitlin was standing by the front door now, and he could see the doctor a couple of metres behind her. Neither woman spoke but Joe could almost hear their thoughts as their eyes flickered between his face and the knife in his hand. ‘I thought I saw someone,’ he said, and when that didn’t appear satisfactorily to explain his actions to Caitlin or Dr McGill, he pushed past them and into the living room, where he dropped back down onto the sofa and distractedly examined the blade. He could hear the women talking in the hallway, but their voices were just a blur.

Two minutes passed. Caitlin and Dr McGill returned.

‘You need to understand, Joe,’ the doctor said, sitting down beside him and giving him a kind look that made him want to throttle her, ‘that sometimes, when people have experienced extreme stress, they can be traumatized in ways that they find difficult to control.’ She sounded like she was talking to a child. ‘I’m prescribing you some tablets. They might help you. Some people experience side effects . . . they can make you feel worse before you feel better . . . but it’s very important that you take them every day.’ She started writing out a prescription. ‘And I’m going to recommend that you see someone. Talking therapies can be very useful in situations like this.’

She held out the prescription, but Joe didn’t take it, so she placed it on the sofa next to him.

‘You’ll get that prescription as soon as you can? Today, if possible?’

No answer.

‘I’ll explain everything to your wi— your partner.’

No answer.

‘It’s very important that you take this medication, Joe.’

No answer.

‘I’ll show myself out.’

‘You do that.’

More voices in the corridor. The sound of the front door opening and closing. Joe saw the doctor walking briskly past the front window. And then Caitlin was there again, standing over him with a worried frown.

Joe took the prescription, but didn’t even look at it before ripping it in two, scrunching up the pieces and throwing them into the centre of the room.

‘Joe . . .’ Caitlin started to say, but she fell silent as he stood up.

‘I’m going out,’ he said.

There were the pubs of Hereford, and then there were the places people went to drink. The Three Barrels was one of the latter. Frosted-glass windows. Sticky tables. Sticky floor. Slippery customers. A faint, lingering smell from the urinals. An old TV set hanging in one corner, the volume muted, which nobody watched.

Joe had been dry for six months. There was plenty of hooch knocking around Bagram, of course, and it would have to be a fucking stupid officer who didn’t let his men relax after several days of repeated contact. But for the Regiment lads it had been a no-no, and that was nothing to do with the ruperts. When your fitness and a clear head are all that’s between you and an enemy round, you do everything you can to take care of them.

Now Joe drank like he was watering the desert. Pints of strong, cold lager – Kronenberg – he wasn’t even counting how many, though he had the impression that the Aussie barmaid, with her nose stud, low-cut top and the edge of a tattoo peeking above her cleavage, was. The winos came and went; it grew dark outside. Joe maintained his position at the bar, carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone, doing everything he could to drink himself into forgetfulness. It didn’t seem to be working. When the TV screen showed what he immediately recognized as the compound in Abbottabad, swarming with journalists, he turned and looked the other way before downing what was left of his pint and ordering another.

He only left because the barmaid told him three times that she was closing up. He certainly had no idea what time it was, or how long he’d been in there; it was only as he staggered to the door, finally drunk, that he realized he was the last punter. Out on the pavement he swayed as he looked up and down the street, trying to get his bearings. A line of people snaked out of the door of a kebab shop on the other side of the road. The yellow and red signs became momentarily blurred, tracing neon lines in the air as he moved his head from left to right; the headlights of cars travelling in either direction, one every three or four seconds, did the same. Ten metres to his left he saw a little mob of six townies starting the opening salvoes of what would clearly end up as a fist fight; he saw a couple snogging in the bus stop opposite; he saw people walking up and down both sides of this busy Hereford street, even though it was late.

He saw a kid with dark skin and yellow teeth leaning against the window of the kebab shop, a bottle of Coke in his right hand.

The alcohol in his system made everything spin. He staggered back against the door of the Three Barrels, his head suddenly filled with the shouts of the little mob. He tried to shake off a wave of nausea.

Then he looked up again. The kid with the Coke bottle was gone.

The mob’s disagreement had shifted to the area of the pavement bang in front of Joe. He burst through them – they fell silent for a couple of seconds – then strode into the road. He heard the screeching of brakes and saw the line of people outside the kebab shop turn to look at him. He stepped among them, moving along the line, checking their faces, grabbing those who had their backs to him by the shoulders and yanking them round. Angry mutters quickly became more forceful. A squat guy with balding scalp and a rugby player’s physique pushed Joe in the chest. ‘Get out of it, sunshine. You’re fucking steaming . . .’ Joe fell backwards, regained his balance and scanned the line once more. No, the kid with the Coke wasn’t there, and as he looked beyond the queue and over his shoulder, there was no sign of him.