Popper paused with his hand on the handle of his car, looking up at the sky. The longer he stared, the more stars appeared. As a child, he used to imagine that they were tiny windows into heaven. He took a drag on his cigarette, opened the door of his car, folded himself into the front seat.
He reclined the driver’s seat of his Golf and angled the rear-view mirror downwards. Now he could see himself, this man he used to know, half hooded in shadow. Were others able to discern the change in him? Had the person he used to be gone forever? These were questions he had never seriously needed to ask himself before. He had always known exactly who he was, where he was going. There had been a sense of inevitability about his course through life, the one stage following the next, the one achievement after the other, building alongside his contemporaries towards a peak of stability, accomplishment, wealth and a family of his own. But now it was falling apart.
Who was this man that he used to be? He used to listen to Kings of Leon, that was one thing, that was definite. He reached forward and turned on the car stereo: there they were now, an echo of a lost world. He used to like Cheese, too, to dance to, but would never have had it playing in his car. So far so good. What else?
He used to wear Asics trainers. In the dark footwell, there they were still, two pale fish. Asics trainers, jeans, a body warmer; a North Face body warmer, a little American but top quality. He used to understand the value of good gear. Gore-Tex.
What else? His parents lived in Oxfordshire and he himself lived in London. Pimlico, near St James’ Barracks. His father had worked as a private banker for Lazard, and had married his mother before they both went out to Hong Kong; they had returned to the UK when he was starting prep school. Now his father was retired, but still did the occasional bit of private consulting for trusted clients. He was a compassionate Tory, Popper’s father, concerned by Britain’s reduced standing on the world stage. They used to enjoy long, boozy lunches at White’s, during which they would discuss Europe at length, and after which, if sufficiently sober, or perhaps sufficiently drunk, they would leaf through the leather-bound book to find prospective Members, and add their signature to the ones of whom they approved. Popper’s father was anxious about his son’s choice of career, the danger of it, yet he was proud of him all the same. He could never say so, of course, being a man of his generation. Nonetheless he was confident that his son knew of his pride. Mother and father would come and see him from time to time in London. They wanted him above all to find a good girl to marry.
He used to love skiing, walking, cycling, not surfing. The occasional game of touch rugby. He had been a decent flanker at school, but not the star player – always there clearing up, always a quiet authority, offering the team a sense of equilibrium when the others were losing their heads. He used to harbour bitter memories of losing to Harrow having outplayed them man to man. If truth be told, latterly he used to play touch rugby mainly to show he could still do it. Come to think of it, he had been a ringer for the City Sevens.
He had had one long-term relationship at university, and no others since. He had been no womaniser. Though at the same time, he wouldn’t have resisted if the opportunity had presented itself. He had gained a reputation as a very good usher. A solid bloke. A good lad. His friends had worked in hedge funds, in private equity. From the King’s Road it used to be only a short way home, by taxi, by bus. He used to like ales, he could hold his drink. He was tall – not ripped as such, but wiry and muscular. He had always been good with his hands.
Yes, he had liked school. It had been a privilege, and he had appreciated it as much as it is possible for a boy of that age, in that circumstance. He had excelled in physics and mathematics, had shown flair for building things. He had been a House Prefect. He had been a House Captain. He had been everyone’s mate. Five years living in a school with a whole range of different people had taught him, like the others, to be always charming. And he had been presidential, able to take command without being dictatorial. Leadership, that was it.
He had graduated from Sheffield with a 2:1 in engineering, then gone straight to Sandhurst. His parents had come to visit one year, just before Christmas, for dinner with the officers; they both had got rather drunk but neither had been in any way embarrassing. Although his friends didn’t understand it – they all signed up for the Infantry, the Cavalry – he had joined the Engineers. Not as sexy, not as glorious, but he loved building things, and without the Engineers the Army would be sunk.
Why don’t you join the Scots Guards? They fought in the Falklands. Or the Queens Royal Lancers? Coldstream Guards? As an Engineer you’ll be commanding chicks, you know. Spending your time digging holes. Yes, he had doubted his decision, but had never wavered. He used to be good at his job. He had been well loved by his men, who felt they could go to him with anything: marriage problems, financial problems, emotional problems. His first tour, of Iraq, had been effective and, in a strange way, the happiest time of his life. After that he had worked in Afghanistan.
Popper reached over and turned the music up, as if this would silence his mind. He found himself thinking about that woman. What was her name? Shauna. She was attractive, undeniably; he could see she had a hot body even under that jumper. And she was funny too, in an odd sort of way. Yet she had made him feel so tired. He knew her sort, had met countless women like her in his time. It was inevitable they would share a mutual friend; inevitable, in a way, that it would be Hodgy, ladies’ man that he was. He wouldn’t be surprised if Hodgy had tried it on with her at that wedding.
Formerly, he would have enjoyed having a laugh with a random girl, flirting a little, talking about this and that. There was nothing else to do, after all. But he couldn’t take people seriously any more. Especially not people like her. His energy had gone.
For he was a man who had been forced face-to-face with death, and this was a concern of his, this dying. Nothing but a shroud-scrap lay between a man and the darkness; he had been awakened to that fact, and in the process the person he used to be had died. What was left? Nothing. Numbness.
He reclined his seat as far as it would go and tried to make himself comfortable. He heard the sound of sirens, the whup of a helicopter overhead. The image that came into his mind was a thing of transcendent beauty and purity. It was towards the end of May, in the early morning. The sun had just risen above the slouching silhouettes of the Hesco blast barriers – massive, sand-filled, soft-edged canvas cuboids – that rimmed the Shawqat Forward Operating Base. Or rather what would later become the Shawqat Forward Operating Base if he and his platoon managed to complete it without getting killed. They had been at it for several weeks already, and they still felt no closer to completion; there were twenty of them there, only twenty, and they lived every moment with the knowledge that if the Taliban saw through their illusion of strength and mounted a coordinated attack, the Engineers would be overrun. They would have their genitals cut off, the women would be raped; they would be beheaded with religious relish.
The sun was a borehole in the blue. Dust swirled in great plumes across the wasteland, coming close to taking form but each time refusing. He was standing in the lookout station at the westernmost corner of the FOB, his radio crackling in his hand, looking up at the sky. Two American A-10s swooped across the face of the sun. These were no F-18s; they were balletic, graceful visions of poise and elegance as they cut through the sky laden with enough armaments to end the world. They released a volley of crescent flares, a show of force. His eye was drawn vertically downwards, following the perpendicular line of smoke that seemed, for an instant, to connect the jets to the earth. There, almost hidden by the landscape, lay the smoking remains of the Viking that had been carrying two of his men, on his orders, to Bastion for some R&R. The jets made another pass. Then they banked and flew away, skybirds returning to the sky.