Recoil

4

I studied the skyline. ‘Jesus, Davy, get a move on. Where the fuck are you?’

‘Don’t take His name in vain, Nick.’

‘Davy won’t mind, mate. I do it all the time . . .’

I thought Sam must be taking the piss, but then I saw the expression on his face. It was like Standish would have looked if you’d told him Beef Wellington wasn’t on the menu tonight.

He lifted his arse, fished in his back pocket and handed me a battered leatherbound book. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘It’s right up your street – sex, violence, revenge, all sorts.’

I flicked open the cover. ‘It’s the New fucking Testament. I didn’t know you were into that stuff, Sam . . .’

I suddenly felt like I’d been locked in the same cell as a double-glazing salesman. Weddings and funerals were the closest I came to the happyclappies, and when people started talking to me about God or country, it just made me run for the hills . . .

His eyes flashed. ‘You’re not really getting the message, are you, son? I don’t like foul language being used alongside the Lord’s name. It’s like me calling your mother a whore.’

I nodded, but still couldn’t work out why it offended him so much. And maybe my mum had been a whore – I’d never met her to ask.

I handed back his Bible. ‘No, thanks, mate, not for me. There’s no pictures. And, besides, I know the ending.’

‘You’ll find out one day what you’re missing.’

‘How do you square all that with being in the Regiment? Hardly turning the other cheek, is it?’

He beamed. ‘I know that what I’m doing is the right thing. Jesus wasn’t some kind of drug-crazed hippie who walked around followed by bluebirds and talking donkeys. He was a revolutionary. He said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

‘He also said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung round his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” That’s him distinguishing the guilty from the innocent, Nick, and telling us whose side we should be on.’

This didn’t sound good. He was confusing himself with Billy Graham. Any minute now he’d be thumping the lectern.

‘People like the high commissioner’s lot down there –’ he waved his thumb towards the skyline ‘– they’d be dead if the likes of us didn’t turn to.’

‘Aren’t the rebels God’s children too?’

‘Of course!’ He beamed again. ‘It’s just they don’t know it yet.’

I kept my eyes down and concentrated extremely hard on de-lumping my Milo. ‘Isn’t killing them a bit against the rules?’

‘No. We’re doing the right thing. If those rebels get killed, God will forgive them at the doors to the kingdom of Heaven, because He knows they don’t know any better.’

‘I see. Kill ’em all, let God sort it out?’

‘Do you believe in God, Nick?’

I shrugged. ‘Dunno. I’ve always thought of Him as an imaginary friend for grown-ups. But maybe it’s smart to hedge your bets. Call me an agnostic.’

If Sam thought that was an open door to try to convert me, he wasn’t going to get the chance to push it. The tinny roar of the 175 Yammy got louder and I saw Frankenstein stand up in his cab to my left.

A second or two later, the machine jumped out of the dead ground, slewed round, and Davy gunned it towards the lead wagon. He looked like a twelve-year-old. He was as skinny as a pencil, and the diet here wasn’t exactly helping to fill him out. He definitely needed to go home and get a few bags of fish and chips down him – though half would probably end up on the floor. He’d lost three fingers from his left hand when he was in the Tank Regiment; his driver’s hatch had decided it wanted to close all by itself. Fuck knows how he’d passed Selection. He should have been modelling for an artificial-limbs catalogue, not fucking about on a 175 that weighed more than he did.