Geldof’s combat training began at dawn when he was rudely awakened by his mum’s voice. In his sleepy state, he believed he was in his bed at their Bearsden home being roused for school. Downstairs there would be a breakfast of chopped fruit in soy yogurt, which he would grumble about but eat nonetheless before heading round to Nadeem’s to walk to class. His nostrils filled with the faint scent of dope smoke. He smiled. His dad was in the back garden, fiddling with his squirrel assault course and puffing on his first joint of the day.
“Just ten more minutes,” he muttered.
When he opened his eyes in response to the shaking that predictably commenced and saw Fanny’s ruined face, the fantasy fell away like the badly painted backdrop of a school play. His face must have mirrored the corresponding sinking in his stomach, for Fanny turned slightly to hide the more-ravaged side of her features. He reached out to touch her chin and turn her face back toward him. He brushed his fingers across the scars. She flinched, but didn’t pull away. “Does it still hurt?”
“It’s always going to hurt.”
“I know,” Geldof said, and pulled her in to squeeze her tight. Her grip around his back was tight, but he still sensed nothing sinister lurking behind the hug. It was simply the fierce embrace of a mother who’d missed her son. “Right,” he said as emotion threatened to overwhelm him. “Enough soppiness. We are British, after all.”
Fanny got to her feet. “Absolutely. Come on, it’s time to start your training.”
“Any chance of some breakfast first?”
“Shooting practice, then breakfast. A hunter aims better on an empty stomach. Meet me outside in ten minutes.”
Geldof, now fully awake and rather excited at the thought of unleashing the fearsome warrior he’d always hoped lived inside him but had never been able to locate, gave his teeth a perfunctory brush, shrugged on his clothes, and hurried into the chilly morning. Fanny was standing in the middle of the clearing, a bow in each hand.
“We’re going to start you off with a stationary target,” she said, indicating a bull’s-eye nailed to a tree.
Geldof eyed the target, which was a good twenty meters distant. “It’s a bit far away.”
“Nonsense,” Fanny said. She dropped one of the bows, slipped an arrow from the quiver on her back, nocked, turned, and fired. The arrow thrummed through the air and hit the center of the target with a cartoon-style thwock.
Geldof whistled. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“I did have a life before you were born. Your turn.”
Geldof picked up the bow. The only time he’d held such a weapon it had been a plastic made-in-China effort that fired sucker darts. He’d never been able to hit anything then, and he wasn’t feeling too hopeful now. “So, am I supposed to split your arrow or something? Or maybe you can stand over there with an apple on your head.”
“Let’s start with not shooting yourself in the foot.”
She stood behind him, guided his hands to the correct position, and showed him how to nock an arrow with two fingers. “Now pull.”
He hauled as hard as he could and managed to get the string back half as far as Fanny had. He pointed in the general direction of the target, his arms already wavering with the strain. When he let go, the string pinged his fingers and the arrow sagged through the air. It didn’t even make it halfway to the tree.
“No problem,” Fanny said. “Let’s try again.”
And so they did. Again. And again. And again. By the time they finished, Geldof’s fingers were raw, Fanny’s face flushed, and virtually every object around them—except the target—perforated. It seemed Geldof’s inner warrior was still in hiding.
They broke for a quick breakfast, and then it was time for combat yoga. Nayapal was waiting for them down by the water’s edge, doing a showboating handstand on a rock.
“Geldof,” he said from his inverted position. “How is the rash?”
“Much better,” Geldof said, refraining from adding, “No thanks to you.” He still hadn’t forgiven Nayapal for his consultation at the height of the hemp-induced itchiness, when he’d hovered his hands over Geldof’s body for five minutes before diagnosing an extreme case of “spiritual malaise.” He’d been correct about Geldof’s struggling to find his place in the world, but that had no connection to the rash.
“Then let us begin,” Nayapal said, lowering his legs to the earth in an impressive display of strength and balance.
The lesson began with ten minutes of sun salutations, which were intended as a limbering-up exercise but set Geldof’s arms and hamstrings trembling with effort. Halfway through, Mick wandered over to sit on the grass and spectate. After the sun salutations, Nayapal had Geldof attempt to contort into a series of other poses—each agonizingly painful and as far from martial arts practice as Geldof could possibly imagine. He managed to fall on his arse during each one. Finally, when he almost broke his neck during an attempted handstand, he sat down.
“Come on, Geldof,” Fanny said, frustration evident in the stiffness of her voice. “You never know when you’re going to have to fight.”
“I’m trying,” he said.
“Either do, or don’t do. There is no try.”
“For feck’s sake,” Mick called across. “Are you quoting Star Wars at the poor lad?”
Fanny looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yoda said that to Luke. What’s next? Is this old bollix going to start spouting Mr. Miyagi at us?”
“It’s pretty obvious I’m going to be crap at everything,” Geldof said before his mum could shoot off a rejoinder, all too aware that this situation had the potential for escalation even given his mum’s pig-induced personality makeover. “Can’t we just stop?”
“You need to be strong of body and mind if you’re going to join us.”
“God’s blood, I’m not John Connor. I’ll be delivering leaflets, not fighting an army of killer robots.”
“Who’s John Connor?”
“The leader of the resistance in the Terminator films. You’re acting just like his mum.”
Fanny’s eyes bulged out of her head, and Geldof began to worry the virus was taking over. “Can everybody just stop talking about films? Doesn’t anybody have anything original to say anymore? I never owned a television, I never went to the cinema. I haven’t seen any of them, and I don’t care that I haven’t.”
“You’re the one who just quoted a film,” Mick said.
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Fanny shouted.
Geldof sighed. “Fine. I’ll stop. But I just don’t see how this can have any kind of combat application. Can’t he teach me kung fu or something?”
“He’s right,” Mick said. “Yoga’s for fat birds who can’t be arsed with proper exercise and gay boys in ball-hugging pink leotards. I’ll teach him some proper hand-to-hand combat.”
“If it helps, I’m already an expert in face-to-hand combat,” said Geldof. “My face. The other guy’s hand.”
“Do not listen to him,” Nayapal said serenely. “There are many roads to the top of the mountain.”
“You’re going to make him run up a mountain?” Mick said. “That’s not fair, now. Even Rocky only had to go up some stairs.”
From the grin on Mick’s face, Geldof could tell he’d thrown in another film reference just to wind Fanny up.
Nayapal folded his hands. “Allow me to translate,” he said, before turning to Mick and saying in a thick Scottish accent that was pure Cumbernauld, “There are shitloads of ways to kick the fuck out of cunts like you.”
Geldof burst out laughing, but Mick’s face reddened. He stomped over to Nayapal, throwing off his jacket to reveal biceps that were larger than the Nepalese man’s head. “How’s about you prove it, then?”
“We do not practice in anger,” Nayapal said, unflinching even as Mick lowered his face into his.
“I knew you were all talk and no fecking trousers,” Mick said.
“I’ll take you on,” Fanny said. She wore the same scathing snarl that had always painted her lips when she argued with their neighbor David about his environmentally unfriendly meat obsession. “Geldof needs a demonstration.”
“I don’t fight women.”
“And I don’t take kindly to sexists. Your swollen, misogynist balls should have done the world a favor and forgotten to drop. Whether you fight back or not, I’m going to right that wrong and kick them back up into your abdomen.”
Geldof had seen his mum in action, jamming her armpit into David’s face with steely strength when their game of Scrabble escalated into all-out warfare. With the virus inside her, she would be more likely to jam Mick’s armpit into her own face and bite it. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said.
They both ignored him. Fanny advanced and Mick backed off to face her. “Fine,” Mick said. “I can be modern.”
As soon as Fanny came within range, the Irishman spun on the spot and whipped a booted foot toward her head. Geldof cringed, expecting to hear a crunch and see his mum’s teeth fly through the air. The speeding foot whooshed through empty air as Fanny crouched low to balance on the balls of her feet. From there she came up onto one foot and slammed the other upward into Mick’s exposed groin. He let out a keening grunt and collapsed to his knees. Fanny gave him no time to recover. She leapt forward, hitting him square in the face with her groin and sending him crashing backward. She squeezed her thighs round his neck. “You were saying?”
To Geldof’s surprise, Mick began to laugh. He put his hands on Fanny’s waist, in a way that was as far from combative as possible. Fanny, suddenly aware the timbre of Mick’s arousal had shifted despite what must be a pair of firmly smarting testicles, loosened her thigh hold. Still holding her waist, Mick got his feet under him and hauled them both up. They stood face to face, both breathing heavily. Geldof remembered his mum’s nymphomaniac tendencies. Two days without sex had been enough to send her running into the street to hump lampposts. He couldn’t begin to imagine how seven months of abstinence had made her feel, particularly since the virus turned the bearer’s sex drive up to eleven. Sure, the leaflet she’d given him called for regular sex, but as far as Geldof could tell she wasn’t getting it on with anybody in the commune. With no suitable partner, she must have resorted to sorting herself out. That was something he really didn’t want to think about.
Fanny’s mouth was half open, and she made no attempt to pull away. For a moment, Geldof thought she was going to whip down Mick’s trousers and give him a brisk seeing-to there and then. To Geldof’s relief, she took a deep breath and an unsteady step backward.
“Lesson’s over,” she said, and virtually sprinted away.
Mick watched her go, a grin plastered across his face. “That’s some woman, there. I’d like to have a proper wrestle with her.”
“That’s my mum you’re talking about,” Geldof said.
“Right you are. Not your wife or your daughter. So it’s none of your business.”
Mick was right, but Geldof couldn’t help but feel protective: of both his mum and the memory of his dead father. The mercenary wasn’t an ideal choice for a boyfriend—although admittedly neither of them appeared to be thinking of anything beyond the next couple of minutes. Still, he thought it wise to attempt to dissuade Mick from further pursuits. “Don’t her injuries put you off?”
Mick scowled at him. “That’s a terrible thing to say, so. Never judge a woman by her face. It’s what’s in here that counts.” He thumped his chest. “Passion. Heart. And she’s got them in spades.”
Geldof, suitably reproached, felt awful about trying to use the scars as an impediment to Mick’s lust. He wondered if he’d misjudged the mercenary: perhaps there was a tender soul under the crude, gruff exterior after all. What Mick said next ruined it all. “Anyway, I don’t know about your cock, but mine doesn’t have any eyes. Even if it did, it’d be too dark in there to see.”
With that, Mick went striding off after Fanny. As he went, Geldof realized he had one card to play. “She’s got the virus!”
“That’s why God invented condoms,” Mick said without looking back.
“God doesn’t approve of condoms.”
“Only the Catholic God. I’m a proddy.”
“And you actually brought condoms with you?”
“You’re such a virgin. Always have condoms in your wallet. You never know when you’re going to get your end away.”
“You thought you’d get lucky on an island full of bloodthirsty maniacs?”
“I’m a bloodthirsty maniac myself, so it was a fair bet.”
“But she might attack you.”
“I like it rough,” Mick shouted.
Geldof turned to Nayapal. “Can’t you restrain him or something?”
“Soul and body are two halves of the same whole,” Nayapal said in his calm, mystical voice. “There can be no unity of purpose without completeness.”
“Have you got a stash of fortune cookies somewhere? What does that even mean?”
Nayapal smiled and reverted to Scottish. “A good, hard shag never hurt anybody.”
Even though he’d never been the recipient of a good, hard shag, Geldof couldn’t argue with that sentiment. His mum had always known her own mind, and, virus or not, if she gave in to Mick’s advances it would be because she wanted to. And after all she’d been through, and all of the problems that no doubt lay ahead, she surely deserved something for herself. If anything, he should probably be more worried about the mercenary. Should he succeed, he had no idea what kind of relentless pummeling his blind little friend would be in for.