The Gone-Away World (21 page)

Gonzo himself is mostly absent, busy and productive with an ordinary life, and this gives me a warm feeling inside, as if it is something I have achieved; by straying from the path, I have allowed Gonzo to remain on it. It seems very odd to me that I am now part of the oppressive organs of state might, but I come to the conclusion that I am in fact investing in the defence of the conceptual framework of tolerance, and training for the last—rather than the first—resort to violence. If I sort of squint at this idea, I can almost believe it. Mostly, I do not think about it.

I
N THE
practice yard, Ronnie Cheung is sparring with Sergeant Hordle. I have watched Sifu Cheung for three months, but I have been careful in this context not to obtrude upon his notice. I have studied under Richard P. Purvis and alongside George Copsen's other minions. I have been outwardly an indifferent student, but not a bad one, in case bad students get personal attention from Ronnie Cheung. I have improved at about the same speed as Riley Tench, who is a narrow, whipcord officer with “career” all over him and a degree in military history. Riley Tench fights politely, as if it would be rude to surprise an opponent, but he hits hard and doesn't yield unless he has to. He's a by-the-book sort of a person, an uninspired, dedicated plodder, which is why I have picked him as my model. As long as I am on the same page as Riley Tench, I will probably get put in only moderately tricky positions and have to deal with the feasible sort of challenge. Riley Tench is not Gonzo.

In the time I have been here, I have never seen Ronnie Cheung as much as discomfited by an opponent; although the boys and girls of various elite units frequently hit him, it seems to have absolutely no effect at all—the blows are absorbed by his legs or his barrel chest and shrugged off his ugly bullet head. Ronnie Cheung is a hard-form stylist the way André the Giant was a kinduva big fella. His attacks are direct, powerful and very, very fast. They land softly on the head and chest of his opponent, because this is a practice bout and it would be improper to scar or break a student, even a soldier like this one.

Sergeant Hordle launches one last combination and Ronnie Cheung gently sweeps him off his feet and buries him in the dust. In this context “gently” means that nothing goes
crack
or
pop;
Sergeant Hordle hits the ground hard enough that I feel the impact in my chest. This would be fairly impressive anyway, because Ronnie Cheung is an ordinary-sized person at best, and Sergeant Hordle is a very big one, but Hordle is also a sergeant in 2 Para, which makes him just this side of tougher than an iron bar. Hordle bounces to his feet and grins.

“That was crap,” Ronnie Cheung says, “it was
total
crap. Are you some kind of huge-testicled
ballet dancer
under that uniform? Are you a fucking
chorus girl
in a red beret? If I strip you off, Sergeant Hordle, and don't snigger because I can and we both know it, if I strip you down to your skivvies with my own two hands, which I wouldn't, because I don't know where you've been,
but I have thoughts,
will I find that you are wearing stockings and a bloody tutu? And lest you think, Sergeant, that I am impugning your
sexuality,
let me remind you that Billy Radigand from C Company was in here half an hour ago and nearly took my bloody head off and he is a
poof,
not to say a
homosexual,
not to say he sups on
sausage
rather than
fish,
but he is
hard as nails
! And
you
are softer than a baby's arse! Now fuck off and practise!”

This is Ronnie Cheung's version of the Socratic method. It is a powerful motivational technique he has developed over many years, which functions best when everyone ignores it outwardly while at the same time being shamed into applying themselves to impossible tasks and thus emerging (in his own words) absolutely top fucking banana. Sergeant Hordle ignores it. He gathers himself up and trots off to one of the groups of trainees and fits himself into the pattern, and it is shortly apparent that he is very, very good indeed.

Ronnie Cheung eyes him with great disfavour, then shouts at a few other people for good measure. Finally, he glances at our corner of the yard, and his gaze sticks. Reluctantly, his attention flickers in my direction, sums me up and doesn't see much to get excited about. He ambles over. He watches me closely and grunts. I am not using what I have learned from Master Wu. I am treating the whole thing as a new arena. I am learning a hard style as if I have never studied a soft one. Don't mix and match—learn and combine, but only when you are ready. I am currently punching a sackful of wire wool to toughen my fingers. I am doing so without enthusiasm, because in fact I am under orders to preserve my hands so that I can operate the weapons systems if ever I should be called upon to do so. That I am also under orders to train as a lethal mêlée fighter is a piece of inherently contradictory crap which I have come to understand is part of the functioning of the world as we know it.

“And who's this bumhole?” demands Ronnie Cheung.

“This is . . . ,” Richard P. Purvis begins, a bit surprised that Ronnie doesn't seem to know my name after three months, but Ronnie Cheung is not watching me fudge hits on the target dummy, he is glaring at a pile of kit and supplies in the corner of the practice yard.

“No, not
that
bumhole,” Ronnie says, “
this
bumhole!” He glowers at a box of blank ammunition and practice knives. “The bumhole who imagines he can hide himself in my yard with some piece of low-rent special forces turdmastery.” And as he says it, he sticks his hands forward and into what I had taken to be the shadow of a packing crate, and emerges tangled in a furious exchange of blows with a broad, lethal figure all in black.

A lot of things happen very quickly. The man—it's absolutely a man—breaks out a sort of truncheon thingy with a gooseneck whip at one end, and starts belabouring Ronnie Cheung about the head, or what would be the head if Ronnie's hands weren't up around his ears, guarding the bits of his face which will have to be stitched back on if the whip connects too sharply. Ronnie doesn't seem to care that the skin on his forearms is splitting, and just keeps on blocking the thing and falling back. My choice would be to evade the whip and find a long, solid stick to use as a staff, but Ronnie is apparently either too proud to do this or doesn't give a rat's arse for staves and would rather suck it up and wait to get close, which he does now, moving as the guy in black makes a mistake with his whip-stick and bashing it out of his hand with a solid crunch which must hurt like hell. There is bone showing through Ronnie Cheung's skin on his left arm, but there's not really a lot of bleeding. This is the point of all the training he does: various bits of his body are now essentially impervious to normal injuries.

Ronnie launches a long, involved combination, arrhythmic and solid, with light skipping footwork to change the angle between them and move the centre line of his body out of his enemy's effective cone of attack. His lighter blows would knock me down, and the heavy ones would almost certainly finish the fight outright. The other guy wards them off, meets them with equal force, and lands a couple on Ronnie which actually seem to have some effect. Finally, though, Ronnie locks the guy's arms down and pummels him, then swings back and delivers a double-hand punch like the two prongs of a forklift truck hitting a corrugated iron wall, which sends the man in black through the air and onto his backside in a cloud of choking dust. Ronnie waddles over and glares at him.

The guy removes his black headgear.

“Gonzo,” says Ronnie Cheung, “that was crap. You are a bumhole.” He is extremely pleased, because his lips are swelling and he actually has a black eye. Gonzo grins. Then he coughs a bit, and Ronnie helps him up.

“I could have killed you, idiot boy,” Ronnie says, and Gonzo replies that no, he couldn't, and Ronnie laughs again. Then Gonzo catches sight of me, and his bruised face lights up.

“Hey!” He leaps on me, delivers a great lunging hug, and I feel the muscles in his shoulders and chest. Gonzo was big a year ago. Now he is a titan. “Fuck, yeah!” says Gonzo, and because he likes to appropriate prowess by declaration he adds, “Have you seen this guy? Voiceless Dragon. Silent and deadly!” And Ronnie Cheung's unblemished eye falls upon me with cordial loathing.

“Kept
that
quiet,” says Ronnie Cheung. “I thought they were all gone. Disappeared.” And when he says “disappeared” he waggles his hands in the air to indicate mystery and fog. At the same time he is giving me a look, which I recognise as a look of
measurement.
I am saved from any questions he may have (and Ronnie Cheung is blessed with a fondness for gossip which would make a dowager duchess blush) by the agency of Riley Tench, who looks at Gonzo and finds it necessary to attempt some male bonding.

“Total fucking
ninja,
man,” enthuses Riley Tench, slapping Gonzo on the back. He grins, and there's one of those
oh shit
silences where everyone wishes they were somewhere else. Gonzo looks sickly, and Ronnie Cheung goes completely still. He is not tense. There is no sense of doggish aggression. He's all relaxed and loose, the rooster strut falling away from him and being replaced by a perfect calm. This is a bad thing. It means he is absolutely ready to kill someone. He is five metres away from Riley Tench when he says “I do not train,” and he is standing very close to him, having crossed the intervening space without appreciably passing through all the necessary points along the line, when he says “ninjas.” He says this quite quietly and without particular emphasis, from a distance of about six inches. It is apparent that, even with Gonzo, Ronnie Cheung was holding back. He is faster and more dangerous than you would imagine is possible. He repeats himself, and Riley Tench sort of stops breathing and goggles at him. Ronnie Cheung says it again, turning his head slowly, so that when he says the full stop, which he somehow does, he is looking right at me.

“I do not train ninjas.”

He nods once, very slightly, and I realise he is apologising to me for Riley Tench. I nod back.

“All right then,” says Ronnie Cheung. “You,” and he points at me, “and Spunkbubble here,” and he indicates Riley Tench, who has just realised that he will not after all die today, and is measuring this glad news against the fact that he will hereinafter and for evermore be known as “Spunkbubble,” “will now engage in a brief sparring match in which you will show him why soft forms are the dog's mighty man-grapes and hard forms are fit only to wash the back end of an incontinent cow. Make a space, boys and girls, for we shall see might and subtlety unleashed like my erection in the presence of a very expensive tart. Guard . . . Ready . . . Fight!”

Bugger.

So now I am in combat, not for real, but for a damn sight realer than I was twenty minutes ago. Ronnie Cheung watches me for signs of slacking, of holding back, and tells my opponent to make a bona fide attempt to injure me. Riley Tench, fair buzzing with fight/flight and desperate to regain some ground, charges in full weight. He almost makes it easy. He attacks high and hard, a basic opening, and I weave and step, brush and twist, and here's a lock, briefly, which throws him that way and then the other, and he is on the floor. He leaps up. Ronnie Cheung throws him a practice knife. Riley lunges for my gut, then turns the movement into a slash. I am inside it. I strike him with my hips, and he goes “Whuff” and tenses, so I wrap the knife arm around myself (incidentally crunching my shoulder into his chest so that he comes with me) and then unwrap and lock it against my chest. As he counters that, I follow his movement and wrap his arm around him so that the rubber blade brushes against his neck.

It is a distressingly intimate thing. For a moment, his face is layed over an agonised canine muzzle, coughing blood, in that tiny shack outside Cricklewood Cove. I ignore it, and flip him flat onto his back, following him down through the air so that the practice knife never wavers. He lands hard (which was admittedly the idea) and I move the knife lightly to indicate that Riley Tench has just joined the ranks of the honoured and exsanguinated dead. Ronnie Cheung calls a halt, and looks at me with distant interest, as if he has just found me on his sleeve and doesn't know from which orifice I have emerged.

“Volunteers?” he says, gesturing at me. Richard P. Purvis steps up and I win against him too, albeit it's scrappy and Elisabeth would sniff at me. Gonzo begs off. Ronnie Cheung shrugs, squares up to me, then beats down my defence and flattens me in about a second—but he does so, to be honest, with huge restraint, and when he says “Bumhole” it is in a thoughtful way. He hums and nods to himself, and the day comes to an end in a bar somewhere. Ronnie Cheung forgets himself as far as to buy the first round.

And Gonzo: what the hell is he doing there? How is G.W. Lubitsch, heading when last seen for a merchant bank with thunderous initials offering salaries like phone numbers—national dialling codes included after five years—and perks and possibilities beyond the dreams of mortal men, how is Gonzo William Lubitsch leaping out like a pantomime villain from behind a packing case? How does he know Ronnie Cheung? The answers are supplied over crisp beer and salty nuggets cooked in saturated fat. Gonzo has a uniform, although the precise name of his unit is classified. Gonzo is also in training, for tasks more direct and warlike than those General Copsen apparently has in mind for me. More cogently, Gonzo spent three weeks at his new job and decided, “If I stay here I will be found at fifty-five, naked under two secretaries with my feet tied to the bedposts and a lemon in my mouth, and I will be dead and fat and no one will cry except the shy woman living opposite who has always had a crush on me but could never tell me and who might have saved me from myself, but didn't.”