The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Read online

  – Don’t kill us! Please don’t kill us! We’re unarmed!

  The rider halts his horse but the energy in the animal will not let it stand and it snorts and high-steps around the three kneelers, somehow combining in its twitchy tread equal elements of the dainty and the dangerous.

  – I’m not gunner kill yiz, the rider says. – Don’t be stupid. Get up, yer bunch of puffs.

  They do. Ronnie’s trembling and he asks the rider for his name.

  – It won’t mean anything to you even if I tell yeh.

  Most people use my nickname, anyway.

  – And what’s that? If you don’t mind me asking, I mean.

  – Not at all, boy. I’m known as the Beast of Britain.

  – Why?

  – Why what?

  – Why are you called the Beast of Britain?

  The rider settles his horse to a head-tossing and snorting standstill and, somewhere in the tangle of his beard, bad-toothedly smiles.

  – I’ll tell yer why. After the scrap here, he nods at the valley to his right – I got bored sitting around with me thumb up me arse waiting for something to happen so I pulled a scam and got the dosh together to go out to ’Beefa. Lived it large for a few weeks, filled some gash, necked a lot of quality E, didn’t want to come back when the money ran out cos I was on it, man, yeah? Come back here to the rain and everything else? Fuck that, man. So I got in with some geezers and one night we gets in the back room of one of the clubs, manager’s in there counting his takings, I stuck a nine-mil in his mush and says: ‘Suck on that, bitch!’ Eight grand we got away with. Spanish Old Bill pick us up but I’m full of ching and E so I smashes up the patrol car and sticks the head on one of the wop coppers and only tries to bite his bleeding ear off don’t I? And down the station they’re all saying, ‘he is-a the Beast-a of Britain!’ My boys were well laughing. The Beast-a of Britain! Well funny, man. Name stuck, yeah?

  Ronnie and his companions digest this information then nod in impressed agreement and concur that Britain’s Beast is a character of note and Ronnie is about to tell him so when he is startled by another blurt of noise louder than the first, as it were a noise of thunder, and he turns towards it although something in him is telling him to move away from it and he sees another, youngish feller with a mad hat of reddy-blond hair and clean-shaven this time, his back erect and face firm with an almost aristocratic mien. He rides a big horse, a big noble horse, coloured like the first with yellow on its legs and the man is wearing a shirt of red nylon with vertical yellow stripes and yellow piping at the cuffs and the yellow is as yellow as the For Sale signs lettering and the red is as red as newly spilled blood, that deep maroony kind of red, as red as a Manchester United home shirt for that is what it is, this rider having been born in Eastbourne and whose allegiances to football as to anything else were guided more by a perceived reflected glory than any kind of rooted loyalty. This rider arrests his horse next to the Beast’s and he speaks to the Beast but looks only at Ronnie and his companions, his hoisted nose a laser down which to guide the beams of his judging eyes.

  – Who are these little shits?

  – Dunno, the Beast replies. – Just met them. Seem sound to me, though. Leave ’em alone.

  – Do they pay their taxes?

  – How the fuck do I know? Ask ’em.

  The second rider and his horse both snort and ride away and Ronnie watches him go until he’s disappeared over the nearest ridge and can no longer be seen.

  – Who was that, Beast of Britain?

  – Dunno. Fuck’s sakes, what do you all think I am? Friend to every bastard? I did recognise him, though. Seen his face on local election posters. Politician. Ponce if you ask me.

  Then the dream flips as dreams do and Ronnie and his wee legion are trudging again across the high green plain in a whistling wind towards a village on the far side of a river, fairly small here and traversable by a skimmed stone in eight or nine hops but which Ronnie knows will become mighty as it nears the sea far away. And encamped on the banks of that river is an army, a multitude attired in desert camouflage with their armoured cavalry painted the same way, many of them shirtless in the high sun and exposing tattoos of faux-Maori design or faux-Celtic design or of stylised crucifixes across the back or Chinese lettering or Sanskrit lettering and the amount of men is such that each of the tattoos is replicated many times over on different limbs. So many tattoos, so few designs. Sitting on a rock regarding this multitude is a sad fat man in a top hat and with a cigar the size of a baby’s arm between his lips, flanked by a man in a cassock on his left and a thinner, pinch-faced man on his right who the dream-Ronnie knows is only a ghost, dressed in ghost-khaki and sporting a phantom moustache and wearing insignia on his spectral breast pocket declaring Desert Rats. Behind these three stands a man grinning with lots of teeth below steely eyes with his hands hovering uncertainly over his sheathed sword as if they do not know what to do with such a weapon, not how to draw it nor how to use it, except the man is barking orders at the roistering troop to draw and be prepared to use theirs. The skin is white on this man’s grinning face and he wears a plain and unremarkable dark and sober suit with a red tie. The Beast of Britain glances just once at this man and then approaches the sad fat man in the hat, smoking the big cigar.

  – Winston, he says. – How are yeh, brother?

  Winston, still sitting, looks up at the Beast, glances at Ronnie and his mates, looks away again.

  – Great Scott, he says in a voice that sounds like a rumble in a tunnel. – Where did you find these miserable specimens?

  The Beast of Britain points. – Up there. On the ridge, by the Hyddgen plaque.

  Winston emits a bass bark.

  – What’re you laughing for?

  – I’m not, Winston says, shaking his head so that his hat wobbles and waves on his bald and shining dome. – How can I laugh, sir? How can I laugh when I see that scum such as these are protecting this island after such fine men protected it in the past?

  This pokes Ronnie into reaction. He balloons his chest, clenches his fists at his sides, grits his teeth, gulps spit, unleashes a blaze in his face, feels the weight in his buttocks that often prefigures violence and opens his mouth to roar and what comes out is a squeak: – I say, steady on, man! How dare you speak so, sir! I’ve a ruddy good mind to give you a bunch of bally fives!

  Robert and Rhys watch the twitching Ronnie. His eyeballs frantically dart beneath his clenched eyelids and his fingertips flicker and he mutters and gurgles in his throat. He’s been asleep since yesterday; Robert and Rhys caught some sleep themselves, a few hours’ worth, without the use of Red Helen’s medication, and they’ve eaten a breakfast of toast and tea and are now watching morning TV whilst Red Helen herself sleeps upstairs in her bed. Whenever she moves in her slumber, the creak and groan of the bedframe can be heard through the ceiling.

  – He must be having one mad dream, Rhys says. – Think we should wake him up?

  – No. No telling what was in that pill. Best just to let it leave his system.

  The Jeremy Kyle Show is on television. Today’s topic is Hooligan UK. And next up, ladies and gentlemen, we meet a man who’s proud to call himself the ‘Beast of Britain’. Wild applause and booing. A youngish man swaggers on stage. He’s on camera. Regardless of why he is, he just is, and his face shows that he feels alive. This is where he deserves to be. In the spotlight. This is his entitlement. Number-one crop to his skull and a tight goatee with a tinge of red.

  – State of this bastard, Robert says. – No wonder he shaves his head. If his beard’s anything to go by he’s a fucking jinj.

  – Beast of Britain? Rhys snorts. – Bellend of Britain. State of him.

  Ah love mih countrih. Simple as that.

  So that means you should go abroad and smash up other countries?

  Ah love mih countrih. Me and mih merts, we love us countrih.

  The island’s great and warrior past is drawn on; Churchill is mentioned, Montgom
ery, the heroes of the Somme, El Alamein, Dunkirk. At the first mention of Blair and Iraq the TV screen crackles with interference and Rhys says: – I’m bored of watching this fucking idiot. What else is on? and he starts to flick through the channels with the remote.

  Ronnie sleeps on, on his lucky moo-cow rug. Ronnie dreams on, on his lucky moo-cow rug. In the filthy cottage dotted with cat shit and reeking of cat piss and the stale and fatty phantoms of old oven-ready meals and fag smoke and unwashed material, Ronnie goes on dreaming his strange dream. In the cottage in the village, in the village that a passer-through would swear was deserted because of the pub with boarded windows like glaucoma’d eyes, because of the shoplessness, because of the chapel now someone’s second home, because of the utter lack of human activity and interaction in its narrow lanes where only small birds chirrup and insects rattle in the overgrown hedges, where nobody leaves their houses, where people die old and alone behind windows with never-drawn curtains, where people, if they ever are glimpsed, are seen as mere blurs behind the darkened windows of their Hi-Lux turretless tanks, where no children play in the gardens or streets, where no one stops to chat on their way to the shop because there is no shop to go to and where no drink and welcome wait in the pub because there is no pub to go to, in this village, this wraith of a village, on the lucky moo-cow rug, Ronnie dreams on.

  Britain’s Beast glowers at Ronnie. – Why’re you talking like that?

  – Like what?

  – Like some posh bastard. All fucking lah-de-dah. Think you’re an officer, do yeh? Sandhurst or something, is that it?

  Ronnie just shrugs. Doesn’t say anything.

  – Well you’re not. You’re a soldier. That’s all you are. A soldier from some council estate and you’re cannon fodder like people like you have always been. You’re first to face the guns. Always are. First face the Republican Guard or the mujahideen will blow off belongs to you. Understand?

  The dream-Ronnie raises a dream-hand to touch softly his dream-face. The Beast leans to one side and spits.

  – Anyway. See that ring that feller’s wearing?

  – What feller?

  – That grinning gimp next to Winston. See his ring?

  Ronnie squints. Sees a chunk of metal glinting on the sober-suited man’s hand, a big ring bearing a symbol, coded shibboleth, badge of belonging.

  – What about it?

  – Well, it’s said that if you have one like it, then you’ll remember everything you’ve seen here tonight. In fact, juskers you’ve looked at it means that you’ll remember everything you’ve seen.

  Ronnie thinks. – So what? What the hell does that mean?

  The Beast thinks too. – Dunno, to be honest with you. Fuck all, really. Like everything. But I was told to tell you that, that’s all.

  Ronnie sees a troop approaching the stream. Quieter than the others, dressed more neatly or if not that then with a self-conscious air of dressing down; artfully-torn jeans, wardrobe by Oxfam Irony Pour L’Homme. Some of them are talking quietly to each other; others shout histrionically in a look-at-me- please way.

  – Who are these?

  – These are some of the people who are sending you to war. Who think that you should go. And while you’ve gone to bleed in a desert they’ll write articles about how brave you are and how necessary your sacrifice is. They’re soldiers, too; in each battle, they bring up the rear. True, that may be 6,000 miles or so behind the fighting, the bullets and the blood, but nevertheless. They also serve who only stand and wait, ey?

  Ronnie’s eyeballs hurt, dazzled as they are by the redness of that troop. Each horse, red. Each ineffectual and unemployed spear and sword, red. Colour of blood spilled but not theirs, no, never theirs, and they glance once at Ronnie and his companions then look away and set to making an encampment above the ford. In a couple of minutes Ronnie can hear them tapping away on laptops and squawking into mobile phones.

  And here comes another phalanx, again approaching the ford. Jeez, thinks Ronnie, the whole country is here. The entire British Isles has come to gather at this spot. The horses move as one in a canter with the huffing rhythm of a steam train and they are white, bright white, with a standard red cross painted across their powerful chests. White as the lily, red as the rose. Ronnie observes them and sees one of their number break away and trot high-stepping through the waters of the ford so that water splashes up onto Winston and his companions. Top-hatted Winston sighs in despair and studies the hissing end of his doused cigar then throws it away and the grinning man looks down at the wetness Pollocking his shirt front and shouts: I say! but the rider ignores him. Then one of the watchers in the ford who has been practising strokes with a cricket bat steps forward and whacks the horse an almighty belt across its nose with the bat. The horse doesn’t flinch. Made of concrete and steel. But the rider then makes to draw his sword and asks: – Why’d you give my ’orse a slap? Cruelty to animals, that is. Good mind to get the bloody law on you, I have.

  – Well, why are you splashing water all over your betters? The man indicates the dripping trio. – Show some respect. Look at them. They’re sodden.

  The rider releases the handle of his sword, sneers, and turns away. Then trots away. Re-wetting everyone around him once again.

  Ronnie looks up at the Beast of Britain. – Who was that?

  – A young man considered to be the best and most accomplished in the kingdom.

  – Where’s he from?

  – The middle of England.

  – And the bloke who smacked his horse? Who was he?

  – Just some cunt.

  The man with the cricket bat spins. – Oh I am, am I? I’ll have you know I fought at Mametz Wood. What have you ever done? What have you ever done to protect this ancient democracy? You’re the cunt, sir.

  At this, a man with regal bearing detaches himself from the throng and declares that he fought ‘knee-deep in the blood of my friends’ at Passchendaele so that, today, so many people could come together in so small a space. And that he finds it odd that those who have been selected for the Battle of Basra should be sunning themselves on the banks of this pretty ford.

  – No spine, the man says. – No backbone. No moral fibre. Tyranny rages in the Middle East and you sit here enjoying yourselves. The country’s under threat and you loll about on the banks of a river sunning yourselves. You: isn’t that right?

  He points at the grinning man who stands and declares solemnly: – I have it on reliable intelligence that weapons of mass destruction can be deployed by this maniac within forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes, gentlemen. This maniac threatens the peace and stability of the world. My intelligence has compiled a dossier.

  The mounted man smirks. – Hear that? Less than an hour. Not a moment to lose. Quick smart!

  And he trots off.

  – Who was that, Beast of Britain? Ronnie wants to know. – And how come he was allowed to speak like that to his leaders?

  – I told you; cos he’s a cunt. And a cheeky one at that.

  The Beast leans to one side of his steed and with one arm scoops Ronnie up and places him behind him on the horse and for that moment Ronnie remembers what it was like to be an infant, nurtured and protected by people bigger than himself. Safe and guarded, but with a buried sense of outrage at his submission to the kinetic whims of others. He wants to suck his thumb. He jiggles loosely on the trotting horse as they set off towards a long, low mountain on the horizon like a bed for a Titan but halfway across the ford the Beast halts the horse and turns and Ronnie sees the valley he is leaving, the valley scattered with people, and notices a new troop of men all arrayed, men and horses alike, in stars white on a blue background and red-and-white stripes slashed across banners held aloft and on horses’ flanks. He sees the grinning man snap immediately to attention and he asks the Beast who this new troop is. What they might represent. Which country they are from.

  – Yanks, says the Beast. – Septics. See the way Winston’s mate is licking their arses
? He’d do anything they ask him to. He’s a creep.

  Ronnie sees the grinning man on his knees in the ford genuflecting and grovelling before this new troop. Sees, too, yet another army approaching down the valley, flying banners green and white on which a red dragon statically roars.

  – And these, the Beast says, – are your country-men. Them without hope or future who signed up cos there was sod all else for them to do and now they’re gunner go and get their legs blown off by IEDs in the desert thousands of miles away from their homes. Just like you.