Needle (2006)

[Early work - Juvenilia, really - I recognise the flaws but I achieved much of what I was aiming for. Published in Edge Words, the anthology of the 2006 Cheshire Prize.]

Needle


The minibus dropped them on the hard-flagged barren dock in a July morning haze. Across the water Lairds’ shipyard was still, stranger in the morning calm than on news reports of strikes and sacked workers. Fourteen boys milled around. They could have been from anywhere, looked normal in jeans and sweaters. Normal but alien to Danny Andrews, the day-boy, who only ever saw them in uniform charcoal trousers, blazer and pinstriped tie. After the crossing they would seamlessly adopt a new order in khaki monochrome – the traditions of a schoolboy cadre which sent child officers to die in the trenches sixty years ago. Officers whose names stood in gilt letters in the school chapel, board after board, a ghost for every boy living.

Two days later, Danny lies in the bottom of a gorse thicket as part of a camouflage exercise, hide-and-seek among the dunes. He breathes his own sweat mixed with the thick coconut scent of the underbrush. Shafted sunlight illuminates an insect among the fine hairs of the back of his hand as needle-sharp mouthparts puncture flesh, burn white-hot. As it gorges the fly pulses with Danny’s pulse. It shimmers blue-black. The iridescence reminds Danny of the magpie he shot down from his chimney, turning flailing circles in the wet November snow until its last songless paroxysm, twenty minutes later.
One hand slaps down sharp on the other and the fly is obliterated. With a fistful of sand he rubs off the smeared gore then rolls to look around. Something digs in, deadening his thigh. In his pocket Danny finds the round, the one swapped while the instructor cleared Fallon's misfire on the firing range. It was a good exchange for one of his hoarded blanks. He synchronized his last shot with that of the cadet next to him to hide the tell-tale report, then smiled inwardly at congratulations for his shooting-
“Good grouping lad - don't know where that last one went though.”

There is turmoil at the edge of the brush. The searchers have realised that gorse rooted in sand is no match for army boots. Search has become assault, stomping destruction of the shelter. Violence accompanied by the thrash of breaking stems and shouts of triumph and of surrender as the indiscriminate boots come close to limbs and skulls. A whistle blows, the instructor's heavy tone halts the exercise and Danny crawls out of the shadow depths into the full light. So does one other figure, Fallon, still apart.
Fallon, victim since the second-day yomp across the island. It was an easy jog for some, the natural athletes like fell-runner Phillips. For others it was an endurance trial. Danny could only feel relief when Fallon collapsed theatrically and they had to rest and slow the pace as their instructor cosseted him along with a hand at his elbow. He got back to camp with relief mixed with the pain on his face until Phillips walked up flanked by his cronies and spat into his face-
"Fat Fallon won't be much use when the Russians invade-"
"Maybe he can stay at home and look after the women-"
"He'll fit in well with those child-bearing hips."
Fallon broke, ran murderously at Phillips, but Phillips was sinuous, evading gracefully, repeating "child-bearing hips!" whenever Fallon seemed close. Danny watched, fascinated by Phillips’ beauty, the dense black hair over the lithe frame, delicate features, too-full lips on a face barely touched by adolescence, a stark contrast with his pointless vindictive intensity. He watched without helping, without wanting to help, to be identified with this fragility. Fallon inevitably gave up, threw himself down exhausted, arms wrapped round his head, taking ragged sobbing gasps on the wooden steps of the hut.
Phillips leant close in, hissed out
"Fallon - you're fucking useless" and strutted back to his cronies.
After that Fallon was always in the way of someone's insult, or elbow, or the child-bearing-hips taunt, while they waited or idled the day away. The barracks was a half-abandoned relic that belonged to a wartime airstrip, maintained for emergencies only. They had few facilities and no entertainment. Hours passed waiting for instructions, for a turn with the radio, for a station at the range, for meals, for lights out, for inspection. Danny kept quiet to avoid trouble, buried his head in a book. He tolerated the discipline and drill and running. Only on the range did he enjoy himself, directing his shots into the chalked killing zone of a paper-and-plywood enemy.

Final day. Cadets assemble once more on the dunes for rifle-squad tactics and a final war-game in the dusk. Response to enemy fire. Assaulting the position. Searching your enemy’s corpse while avoiding hand-grenade booby traps. The training is exhausting in the relentless sun but after sandwiches and sugar-slurry sweet tea they are ready for the evening’s final act.
"OK, listen in."
Sergeant Holmes holds up a metal tube about 2 inches long, brass petals folded in at one end.
"I know, and you know, this is a blank round. That does not mean it's safe. It contains a black powder charge and when you pull that trigger it'll spit out gas and soot and Christ only knows what at hundreds of miles an hour. Think about what that'll do if it hits you in the eye, you will lose that eye.
"Couple of years back a cadet thought he'd test his boots by shooting a blank into one of them while it was still on his foot. When they got him to hospital and managed to cut and peel it off, there were chunks of leather and foot embedded in the sole.
"So what I'm telling you is, you never point your weapon at another person. Shortly we'll be going through a position assault. Do not start shooting at each other. Fire into the air, keep it well above each other's heads.
"Understood? Good. Get on."
He opens up a brown wooden ammunition box.
"Ten rounds each. Give me back any you don't use at the end."
Danny is assigned to Red Team. They don’t receive the full choreography at first, just instructions to set up a defensive position while Blue Team are led away. They wait in silence in a natural hollow, a shelter which others have found and used for other purposes. A beer can rolls in the dirt. Tan tights hang tattered from a gorse spine. A used condom is crushed into the sand. After a tense, silent half-hour Sgt. Holmes returns with instructions for the final assault, then reminds them-
"I'll be with them waiting for you. You know what to do - just do it the way you've been trained.
"Give me ten minutes, then get going."
Their advance is stealthy, avoiding the skyline, following contours, knowing only the rough direction of the enemy. At the foot of a long slope, they spread in a ragged skirmish line. Fifty yards up, ragged cracks ring out. Breath catches on cordite smoke. They dash, dive, down, crawl. Flat on his belly, Danny emerges through the marram grass, gunfire still crackling and smoke drifting. Among it Danny sees movement, lines up the notch of his sight, fires. Lying hard on the ground he feels his heart thudding against the sand.
He has to reload, reaches a hand into his pocket and finds the heavy live round. He caresses it, takes it out, slides it into the breech and pushes it home with a click of the bolt. He sights again, precisely now. The figures in front have resolved – Fallon sitting hunched, unconcealed, Phillips in a warlike pose close by. Behind him someone is stood up, a larger figure, shouting, waving his arms. Other shots still ring out, then a lull and the words come through clear:
"FIRE - INTO - THE - AIR"
There is a silent pause, their adrenaline rush checked. Six rifles fire off their remaining rounds in embarrassed volleys high into the sky. Only one stays level, steady. Danny sees the face of the target from the range, Phillips’ taunting face spitting at Fallon, the dark eye of the magpie in the snow.
The report re-echoes above the pops of the blanks, but Blue team hear a wet thud an instant before. Red are attacking now, six khaki-clad teenagers with oversized rifles charging up the hill. They arrive confused, the others already standing, rifles scattered on the ground, exercise over. Seventy yards away a single figure still stares along the barrel of a rifle at an oddly concertinaed khaki shape in the middle of the group. Face down, there is nothing to see. The coarse sand claims most of the blood, only a thin stain slowly spreading like ink on a blotter.
"Stay here. Don't move".
Sergeant Holmes sets off running, but the evasive faces looking away from Phillips’ contorted figure know there is no reason to hurry.

© Tony Murfin