Gary sat in George’s Bar, Ibiza. It was small but cozy on an autumnal, Santa Eulalia, evening. He supped ale with his new friend Taffy. They had spent the weekend together, dancing through the club circuit, whirling like dervishes to the beat of an ‘ Exotic Punch’, prepared by their young Dutch friend, for his birthday party. In the remnants of its afterglow, they discussed their exploits.
“You was like all over that Karin, last night!” Observed Taffy.
His face seemed to light up, innocently, as he spoke.
“Yes, I was,” admitted Gary. He reflected on her willowy, sensual presence. He didn’t like the fact, it still sent a thrill down his spine.
“You was really going for it. Did you see me dancing on the table?” Taffy cackled.
“I was like an acolyte, from below.” Gary observed, bowing.
Taffy beamed as Gary subtly flattered him.
Taffy spoke in a broad, simple, west country dialect and was proud of his humble origins. He laughed at formal education, yet was proud of a course he had once taken, in creative writing. He boasted about the close attentions of an aristocratic librarian, he met in Malaga prison. This gentleman, Taffy told Gary, had guided his reading, beyond the realms of many a major degree. It was quiet for the tourists had long gone. George listened to a regular, bemoan the upcoming winter, over a game of Backgammon.
“Did I ever tell you Gary how I got in the Army? Cut a long story short, it was either six months banged up or join the Paratroopers,” Taffy recollected, staring closely into Gary’s eyes.
He looked slightly absurd in his long Moroccan kutu. It was like a shapeless dress that fell to his ankles. His short cropped, sweat beaded scalp and unshaven face, was in stark contrast to this eastern attire. He looked into his glass as he remembered:
“I thought might as well join the army…Fuck ‘em…I ain’t doing ‘bird’ for nothing. What a mistake!” He looked up his face angry.
“You didn’t know that Gary. It was one of the worst fucking mistakes I made !” He laughed maniacally and drunk deeply. “I learnt quick I should have taken the Prison.”
He was rueful before suddenly puffing himself up like a peacock.
“I was the first Private to be ever mentioned in dispatches! Didn’t know that did you?”
He leaned forward and spoke softly. “I’ll tell you the story like, ‘cos I trust you. Okay? Why I got mentioned in dispatches.”
He took a deep breath and began:
“Well I’m in Crossmaglen. Do you know it? It’s in the badlands, as they were known in them days. On the border, between the south and the north of Ireland, that is. I was sent there to do a tour of duty, like. Our job was patrolling the border.”
He paused and drunk again, reflecting, taking Gary on a magic carpet ride, through time.
“We were all taking a tea break when it happened. Suddenly this huge bomb goes off. It was massive. The loudest noise I’ve ever heard,” he stared in wonder as he recalled his amazement.
“The force was so strong it threw me up into the air. I mean I was flying, man! Later,in the hospital, they told me the sound waves damaged my blood vessels. All of them not just a few. Anyway, fuck me, did I comes down to Earth with a bang like!”
He staggered back at the memory.
“Know what I mean? He asked hysterically before more quietly he concluded:
“Well you couldn’t know what I mean, but hey.”
He laughed as his voice trailed off, though there was an irony in its tone. Gary could hardly imagine the shock but he got the picture. Crossmaglen was a long way from the Balearics, but he envisaged the green fields of the Emerald Island. Its turf fertilized with futility by the blood of catholic and protestant, wishing to build nations, rather than humanity. Taffy continued to tell how he grew up fast and Gary, despite his mental associations, continued listening, with great attention.
“Sergeant had his head cut clean off,” Taffy reminisced, almost nonchalant in his observation. He used a finger as a pretend butcher’s knife, over his own throat, to illustrate the speed of decapitation.
“I doubt he felt a thing,” he concluded.
“They give me a pension, the army like. Hundred pounds a month. Not enough to live off really. Think the English should get out of Northern Ireland, do you?” There was an urgency in his voice.
“Yes,” replied Gary
“Thought you’d say that. Think Ireland should be reunited, one country, like?” He grabbed Gary’s arm before he could reply and the grip was tight.
“I haven’t told this to many people,” he said to Gary with an icy stare, like the Ancient Mariner once held Coleridge.
“Carry on, Taffy. Carry on, man,” Gary responded in a soft, reassuring voice that he kept for intimacies.
He concentrated and tried to be quiet, within.
“Funny thing is, that like all Irish they got it wrong.” Taffy continued almost in a monotone.
“The bomb was behind a wall you see. It was supposed to blow the wall towards us, inwards, like. It exploded and blew the wall backwards. It was a huge bomb flying in the wrong direction. Well, after I got up I look around. Anyway, I see that part of the bomb has flown off and hit an Irishman on the hill behind me. He’s not far away. There’s always one standing opposite to the direction of the target and he gives the signal for the remote to go off, see. He’s got a huge piece of shrapnel embedded in his guts. The IRA are firing at us from the hills, to stop the helicopters landing and medics arriving.”
“So I’m lying there bleeding. I see my sergeant with no head and a man with his stomach half out. I hear them firing at us,” his voice had dropped, almost to a whisper but the picture was loud and clear.
“Anyway, and I don’t know how I got up with blood dripping in front of my eyes. I grabbed my gun and I run up the hill. The geezer’s lying on the ground, wailing. I get down and pulled the fucking shrapnel out of the bastards middle.”
He turned to Gary.
“You know what I did next? Know what I did? I stuffed his stomach back inside him. Boof, bang, just like that! I know nothing of being a doctor, honest. Still, I pulled out the metal and stuffed his stomach back in. George, two more,” he ordered suddenly.
He paused and light a cigarette. A shadow passed across his face. There was little doubt that the moment would forever be etched on his memory. It was five minutes of his life, for which there is no cure.
“I don’t know how I did it. Had no idea how to stuff a stomach back in someone. It’s fucking amazing. I mean the bastard killed my sergeant man and I saved his life. Can you believe that?”
“I’ll put it on your tab,” said George, bringing the two drinks before walking back to his backgammon game.
“They told me I saved his life,” Taffy sipped his beer.
“I did it quickly, almost instinctively. He was in such agony. I had to be quick cos some fucker was snipping at me. By then I didn’t care. I could see him, so soon as I could, pulled up my gun, took aim and fired. Fuck you I thought, know what I mean? Bang!” Taffy put an imaginary gun to his shoulder, aimed and fired. He even replicated the kick back.
“Got him right through the head. Know what it’s like to kill a man, Gary? I saw him stagger and fall. Next thing it all went black. Thing is,” suddenly he was quieter and his eyes glistened with emotion.
“I found out later, like, when I woke up in the hospital. The man I shot on the hill. Well, guess what, come on, guess what? ” Tears suddenly appeared in his eyes, balanced on the lids, not able to flow.
“I don’t know Taffy, tell me?”
“The man whose life I saved, yea? It was his brother I shot dead on the hill.”
Taffy turned to his glass for comfort.
It seemed for a moment, to Gary, a terrible imposition of fate on the lives of several young men. They were the victims of a war long obsolete in the late twentieth century. Their existence meant nothing to the authorities that had trained them, other than seedy votes, in their nationalistic module of a disintegrating, social structure.
“How about that to live with? I saved one brother and then the next moment killed the other. There’s got to be something in that, eh? Still, I got mentioned in dispatches, know what I mean?” Concluded, Taffy.
