The Way to Babylon (Different Kingdoms) (4 page)

‘That’s right.’ You give me this shit about Skye again, Molesy, and I’ll plug you one, cripple or no.

The old man was less than perfectly clean, and there was a smell off him—sweat and earth—which surprised Riven. The Beechfield staff were usually very efficient about hygiene. Molesy seemed to have escaped their attentions. If it came to that, he had never yet seen the old man in the company of a nurse or an auxiliary. Riven felt a twinge of uneasiness. Almost as if they did not know he was here.

Molesy glanced about once more, watchful as always. Was he worried about being seen? Riven shifted in his chair.

‘How long have you been here, Molesy?’ he asked.

The old Scot ignored him. ‘We share a secret, we two,’ he said—and again there was that accent which Riven could not place jangling behind the brogue. ‘But don’t worry, the secret is safe with me.’

‘What secret?’ Riven demanded irritably.

‘Ah, now, don’t be mocking me, Mr Riven. You’re from Eileen A Cheo. You know what lies in the mountains above the sea, where the waterfall comes down to the Cape of the Wolf’s Heart.’

He’s gone. He is as loopy as a kangaroo.

But the old man’s face had become shrewd, and the stare of the eyes had focused. For a second the jowls of his face seemed to tighten. Riven had the momentary impression that Molesy was not old. But then it was gone.

‘When you have your legs, and the broken pieces of you have put themselves together, remember to go home. We must all go home in the end,’ Molesy said earnestly. ‘That is where you are needed—where the mountains meet the sea.’ His blue eyes twinkled. ‘There are things to be done up there.’

Riven saw Nurse Cohen walking towards him across the lawn. Molesy followed his gaze and flinched. He swore under his breath.

‘Time I was off,’ he said in a muttered sing-song. ‘Time to walk the Northern Road again. Remember the smell of the sea, Mr Riven, and the curlews calling through the peaks of the Black Cuillins. Don’t be forgetting it in this southern place, where the air is full of smoke and the water is stale. Remember where you must go.’

And he lurched away swiftly across the grass, bumping into another patient as he went. He disappeared into the trees, and there was only the faint, earthy smell left in the air to mark his passing.

‘All right, Mr Riven?’ Nurse Cohen said cheerfully, taking the handles at the back of his chair.

‘Who the hell is he?’ Riven asked her.

‘Who?’

‘The old man—the old Scot. Has he been admitted here?’

‘We’ve no Scots at Beechfield, Mr Riven. Just one Irishman, who is ready for his dinner. It’s getting chilly, don’t you think?’

And Riven shivered slightly in answer, though not with cold.

H
E SPENT A
lot of time in the recreation room these evenings, as it got dark so early. There the patients watched television, played cards or argued half-heartedly amongst themselves. Riven read. He was attempting to keep abreast of the current fantasy scene, as his editor called it. He wondered sometimes if he would write again, but there was something there, something black and futile, which stopped him every time his pen touched paper and made every word he wrote into nonsense; useless nonsense. So he waited out the long evenings into the winter that was coming. Apart from Hugh, he had spoken to no one from his former life since he had left hospital. Former was what he called the life before. He could not quite believe that there had been a life before. The laughing platoon commander, the lover, the husband, the writer. All that had been someone else.

He looked out of the window to where the river ran off in the darkness. Where Molesy had disappeared.

It’s going to be one of those nights. Well, it’s not the first and it won’t be the last. How long ago was it, when I first went to Skye? A never-to-be-forgotten visit while I was still in the army. One winter, long ago.

S
TARING OUT ON
the loch, he watched the greylags wheel round and honk their way into the water. The last light was going down behind the mountains, leaving herring-bones of pink cloud trailing across the sky, throwing sunset into the water, making the ripples incandescent.

His feet were wet, and the fire was sinking along with the sun. His mess tins sat at his side, undersides blackened, insides smeary with curry. He’d wash them in the stream later.

No tent, and it looked like rain. He did not trust the bivvy-bag entirely. Screwing up his face at the darkening sky, he rubbed pine resin from his fingers. He missed the sound of the sea, for he had slept on the shore for the past few nights. Now all he could hear was the rising wind in the peaks—and the settling of the geese on the loch.

Beats the hell out of traffic. He grinned at the fire and his faintly steaming boots. Stretching, he felt a bright prickle of rain on his upturned face. Not the first night he would be soaked through whilst sleeping. A few days ago he had woken up, bivvy stiff with frost. The nights were long these days, getting longer. Snow had held off, though. Only the mountains were dusted with it. The mountains he would begin scaling tomorrow.

‘Y
OU KNOW, SIR,
I sometimes think that if it wasn’t for me, you might dig a hole and hide in it. What do you think you’re doing, sitting there staring at nothing?’

Startled, Riven turned away from the window to see Doody watching him with disapproval. He whirred the chair round almost sheepishly.

‘Anyway, I come here on a mission.’ Doody moved to the back of the chair and took the handles. ‘We’re off to see the wizard, me old son—but if anyone asks I’m taking you to the bog.’ He wheeled Riven out of the recreation room and away from the clamour of the television. Then, looking about him as if he were on patrol, he took Riven down a side corridor, whistling tunelessly.

‘Can I ask what’s happening, or is it a state secret?’ Riven demanded peevishly.

Doody laughed. ‘Tonight, sir, since you’re off the drugs, you and me is going to get paralytic.’

Eventually they stopped outside the door of a storeroom. Doody produced a bunch of keys with a flourish and, opening the door, bowed deeply. Riven motored the chair inside.

‘Fucking Aladdin’s cave or what?’ Doody asked, closing the door behind him and switching on the light. Riven began to laugh. Piled on a table in the middle of the cluttered little room were several six-packs of beer, and a large bottle of Irish whiskey. Two pint and two short glasses shone there also.

‘Don’t say I don’t think of everything. I made sure the beer got chilled, too.’ Doody smirked.

A can spat as Riven pulled the ring. ‘Music,’ he said, and began pouring. Doody joined him. ‘Anne Cohen is covering for us,’ he said, ‘so we don’t have to worry about tin-knickers.’

‘How the hell did you get it into the building?’

Doody took a long gulp, swallowed, and closed his eyes for a second before replying. ‘Piece of piss. I wheel laundry baskets. Laundry baskets are big. You put things in them. I could probably get a dance troupe in here if I really tried.’

Riven half-emptied the glass at one gulp, and then put his head back to stare at the ceiling with its single light bulb.

‘You know, Doody, tonight I am going to get totally—’

‘Utterly,’ Doody put in.

‘Completely.’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘Shitfaced.’

‘Here’s to oblivion, sir.’ And their glasses clinked together.

T
HEY MOVED QUIETLY
down the street. His eyes glinted in his camouflaged face and he waved his hand downwards. The brick went firm; four soldiers merged with doorways, their rifles pointing out in covering arcs. In the dark they looked like full bin liners huddled in porches.

They moved on. The radio hissed slightly. Around them the dead windows and closed doors frowned on them. Some were boarded up, some had broken glass glittering in them. A dog barked, and there was the faint, far-off rumble of nocturnal traffic.

‘Hello, mike one zero, this is zero; radio check, over.’

He thumbed the pressel switch and felt the pressure of the mike at his throat.

‘Mike one zero alpha, okay, over.’

‘Zero, roger, out.’

They came to a junction lit by a single amber street lamp. Broken glass was strewn across the road, and a burnt-out car that the day before had been a barricade squatted black and tangled on the tarmac. One by one they scuttled across the dangerously lit space, breathing heavily as they took up positions in the darkness on the other side.

Then they set off again down a darker, narrower street that had more than its fair share of derelict houses and graffiti. One of the soldiers kicked a stone, and it rattled across the road, making them all start. The other three cursed him softly.

Then the night vanished. There was a brilliant flash, and a concussion that blew them off their feet and sucked air out of their lungs. A moment later came the noise, and the rain of rubble and dust. The point man of the brick was engulfed and disappeared.

Riven was blown across the road and somehow his rifle went off in his hand, although he had thought the safety catch on. He lay in a tangle of bricks and the remnants of a small front garden, thinking: I’ve had an ND.

Flashes and cracks started from a house up the street, and thumps as rounds began to go down around them. He pressed the mike button.

‘Mike one alpha, contact—’

Then he crawled to cover as the tarmac in front of his nose erupted in bullet strikes.

‘Belsham! Johnson! George!’ he screamed, vaguely realising that Johnson had been point and was now perhaps beyond hearing him.

Answering cracks came from an SLR close by, and a voice shouting: ‘Belsham here, sir; George is hit. I don’t know where Pete is!’

‘Mike one zero, contact’—he looked about him—‘corner of Creggan and Wishingwell Street. Two casualties. Under fire from at least one enemy. Request QRF. Over.’

‘Zero, roger. QRF on its way. Out.’

He peered cautiously around his little garden wall. The flashes had stopped. The gunman was making his getaway. ‘Belsham! Where the fuck are you?’

‘Here, sir; behind the shed.’

He ran over. Belsham was kneeling beside a prostrate George, ripping up field dressings furiously. Riven felt sick.

‘Where’s he hit?’

‘Chest, sir. I can handle it.’

‘Right. I’ll go and look for Pete.’ He doubled off again to where the explosion had happened. A mass of rubble blocked the road. He stumbled across an SLR with a bent barrel, then found what was left of his point man. He vomited whilst the whine of the Quick Reaction Force’s Land Rovers filled up the street behind him.

T
HE LIGHT BULB
grew brighter, the pile of empty cans higher; the talk louder.

‘What was the first battalion like, then?’ Riven asked.

‘Laid back. What about the third?’

Riven belched. ‘Stuck up. They didn’t like Irish subalterns.’

‘Funny us being in the same regiment, sir.’

‘I was in Ireland when you were in Belize.’

‘Why’d you leave?’

‘Got married.’

‘Oh, shit. Sorry, sir.’

Riven waved his hand. ‘Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.’ He grinned crookedly. ‘Life’s a bitch.’ He sat staring at his empty glass. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he slurred again.

Doody refilled them both, spilt some, and sniffed. ‘What was your wife like?’

Riven continued looking beyond the pint glass in front of him, head swaying slightly. ‘My wife. Bloody hell.’ He blinked. ‘She was tall. Tall and dark. Quite a lass. Her eyebrows met in the middle. I used to call her a witch.’ He smiled, remembering. ‘She put a spell on me, anyway. Jennifer MacKinnon, from the Isle of Skye—the Isle of Mists, in the Gaelic... Ach—’ He downed his drink in a succession of throat-scraping gulps. The empty glass glittered in the artificial light, and he smacked his lips loudly. ‘Fucking beer didn’t last long, did it?’

Doody broached the whiskey with great ceremony, and they toasted each other in loud voices before throwing it back. Riven felt the raw liquid burn its long-lost way home down his throat, and the room wavered a little.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said again as Doody refilled the glasses. ‘Good stuff, this.’

‘Only the best,’ Doody affirmed. He sloshed whiskey on the table and scowled at the bottle. ‘Fucking bad craftsmanship, that.’ Again, they threw back the spirit as though it were water. Riven was beginning to have trouble focusing. There was a window behind Doody’s head, blue with the night, but he could have sworn there had been a darker silhouette framed there for a second—a strange shape with sharp ears...

Ah, I’ve no head for this stuff any more.

Doody began singing quietly, an army song not noted for the delicacy of its language, and Riven joined in with a will. They bellowed out the chorus together. A sweep of Riven’s good arm sent his glass to the floor, where it shattered. They peered at it owlishly. Then there was a knock at the door, and the pair gazed at each other.