Making history

I'd better get up and do ...

... what'?

We.will leave me lying there for the moment, reassembling myself. I am not entirely sure that I am telling this story the right way round. I have said that it is like a circle, approachable from any point. It is also, like a circle, inapproachable from any point.

I came up with those very words at the very beginning of the circle. If circles have beginnings. Now I have to say them again.

As a historian, I said before, I should be able to offer a good, plain account of the events that took place on the

... well, when did they take place? It is all highly debatable. The puzzle that besets me is best expressed by the following statements.

A: None of what follows ever happened B: All of what follows is entirely true

So here I lie, wondering like Keats, Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music, do I wake or sleep? Wondering too, why the Christ Jane isn't coiled warmly beside me. No, not wondering that. I know the answer there. She's left me. That I know. That much I do know. She's outta there. She's history. Wondering then, where the hell I am.

In the centre of my brain there is a dark well. I keep trying to lower buckets into it, buckets of words, images and associations that might bring something familiar to the top, some clear cool splash of memory. Maybe if I prime the pump everything will spew to the surface in a great fountain.

See, I know that there is something to know, that's what's galling me. Something to remember. Something momentous. But what? Memory is a salmon. The tighter you grip, the further it leaps away. That's a familiar image too.

I must get up. Everything will come back to me when I am standing.

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Woah! The head may ache, the gut tremble, the legs wobble, the throat sting, but we are uply up. I haven't vomited for years and I don't like the feeling.

No. That's not right. I have thrown up recently. Over a toilet bowl, with a long string of gob hanging down and stuck to the back of my throat ... was that last night? It was recent. It'll come to me.

Meanwhile ... I look down at myself and ask, what the. hey is going on rig-wise? I don't recognise these shorts or this T-shirt. I'm sorry, but I just do not. I mean, I would never wear anything so ... I don't know, so clean, I suppose. Chino cotton shorts? I could swear they have even been ironed, for all the dried flecks of spew upon them. And a polo shirt ... a polo shirt of sea

island cotton, for God's sake. With a kind of gold embroidered logo on the left tit. I grab the side of the shirt to get a better look. An elephant I think, it's hard to tell upside down, an elephant in a sort of sling. The type of sling you use with a crane for swinging livestock from ship to shore. I mean, what kind of dead-beat geek wears ironed chino shorts and sea island cotton polo shirts decorated with embroidered fucking elephants?

The footwear I can relate to. Your bog-standard sloppyheeled Timberland docksiders. Not mine though, for all they fit like a ... well, you know. Just so happens that I'm not a Timberland user. I'm a Sebago baby. No real reason, just that I always have been. I think.

It's time to stand at the window, open the blinds and remind myself where I've ended up and why.

I've never been very good with Venetian blinds. I always forget whether to pull the cord or to twist the handle. On this occasion I do both and the bottom right side of the blind rises to half-way and then jams there, slats provokingly closed. I bend down to peer through the small clear triangle of window.

Wooh ...

I don't get this at all.

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A long, low building dead ahead. Ivy growing up the side of mullioned windows. St John's College perhaps? Did I stay the night at St John's?

I turn, almost laughing to myself. It's so comical I've just got to roll with it.

Wait a minute ... you've gotta roll with it ...

The phrase triggers the memory of a joke.

Man:	Waiter, that soup I just had ... Waiter: What
about it, sir?
Man:	Well, on the menu it said 'Oasis Soup'.

But it tasted to me like a perfectly

ordinary tomato soup. Waiter: That's right, sir. Perfectly ordinary tomato

soup, sir.
Man:	Then why is it called Oasis Soup? Waiter:

Because (singing) 'You gotta roll with it Der-dan, der-dan ... tishl

Way-hey! And Oasis reminds me of something important. Something to do with Jane.

But Jane's gone ...

I think.

No, it was something she said. Something ... oh, pants to it. I'd better go find my way home and sleep this one off. 'Find my way home' - simpler, finer words were never written. The Odyssey, The Incredible Journey, Star Trek: Voyager. In the end, it all comes down to finding your way home.

I took a shower - a good shower, I'll give it that, a really fine shower, probably, when it came down to it, the best shower I'd ever had in my life, a real hot, hissy, wideangled downpour that fell upon my shoulders like scalding rain. Under that shower I nearly fainted.

I felt shitty from a hangover and a banged head, that is true. But you know, somehow I felt good too. Looked good. I ran a finger round my pecs and thought maybe I was turning into a bit of a hunk at last. I looked down at my legs and that was when I nearly fainted. You would have fainted too.

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I exchanged the chino shorts and the polo shirt for ...

another polo shirt and another pair of chino shorts, for it was hot - even this early in the day and after a shower it was steamy hot with no plain T-shirts to be found - and opened the door, after one more lingering backward look of puzzlement and dread.

I found myself, not in the corridor I expected, but in another room. Bookshelves filled with books, some sort of strange computer, more posters of unfamiliar models, musicians and sports stars, a small fridge, a window-seat set beneath a sham Gothic window ... everything alien. I hardly paused before walking towards another door.

Here was a corridor, not unlike that of a hotel, but brighter and wider; scruffier but at the same time grander. Less obsessively vacuumed, polished and waxed; but of a richer, more solid build - endowed with something of a sheen. The door facing me as I came out into this corridor was numbered 300 and beneath the number I saw a brass plaque, holding a card on which was calligraphed 'Don Costello'. I turned to look at the door I was closing, the door of the room from which I had emerged.

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iffltdjael M looting

I started to run, sweat already breaking out under my arms and sliding down my sides. I passed other rooms, some with doors flung open, their occupants sitting on beds pulling on thick white socks or padding to and fro with towels around their waists. I reached a glazed door at the end of the corridor, threw it open and hurled myself towards a wide staircase of shining pine.

The heat, the unfamiliar smells, the high glass windows, the creak of the wood, they contrived to squeeze together and leak out in my mind like fisted clay oozing through closed fingers. I felt the clammy prickle of the nightmare of the first day at a new school. That dismaying sense of wide-angled dread. The realisation that the proportions and dimensions of the places you see now will quickly be

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remapped in your brain and that soon the perspectives, angles and eye-lines will shrink. You will be able, standing in a hallway, to summon up an image of how that passageway first appeared to you before it became safe and known, and you will marvel that it was ever cast in such frightening lines. Yet all the time, tugging you down like lead, the knowledge that this familiarisation is really a corruption, a loss.

The humidity, however ... I could never accustom myself to that. At its heart a metallic savour that hinted at far-off storms boiling over the horizon.

Half-way down the stairs, I heard the squeak of trainers on wood and the spank of palm on banisters as someone threw themselves upwards.

Whoever this is, I said to myself, I shall ask them as calmly as I can.

I looked down and saw a flop of light hair bouncing up towards me.

'Excuse me,' I said, 'I wonder if ...' 'Yay, it's alive!'

'Urn ...'

'So, how's it going?' 'I ...'

He clapped a hand on my shoulder, blue, concerned eyes scanning my own. 'Woah, you're still looking rough. Gosh you were gone last night. I, er, I just came over to check you out.'

'Er ... where am I exactly?'

'Right! Sure! I think maybe we'd better hit the Tower for a coffee.'

We descended the staircase. It was the boy from the night before, that much I was sure of.

'It's Steve, isn't it?'

'Hey, come on, Mikey, cut it out, okay? Still not funny. Hoo! Pretty much got a head myself.'

'Where are we going?'

'Like I said, the Tower ... no, second thought, state you're in, better make it PJ's. Get some air blowing around you.'

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I followed him down to a door at the bottom of the stairs, on which he leaned for a second, regarding me through half-closed eyes and shaking his head sorrowfully as a schoolmaster looks at the one boy in the class he knows will come to no good. There was a puzzled look too, a puzzled almost hopeful look that I did not understand. Not until later - much, much later - did I understand that look.

'Ay-yi-yi

He sighed and pushed the door open. Warm air buffeted against my face in a moist, tropical wave. Striking with a greater force, a force that took away all breath and all hope of sanity was the vision laid out before me of a huge courtyard, a huge series of courtyards. Collegiate towers, gatehouses, lawns, vaulted passageways, quadrangles and statuary stretched in every

direction. It was as if St Matthew's had developed cancer and erupted with extravagant mutated growths, lush and demented variations on a Cambridge theme.

I stood frozen, my legs braced like a child. 'What's the problem?'

'I ... I ...'

'Heck, something's really bugging you, isn't it?' I nodded dumbly.

'Cm here,' said Steve. 'Look at me. Look at me He peered anxiously into my eyes. I stared back, frightened as hell.

'Maybe you're concussed. Your pupils are okay, I guess. I don't even know what the hell concussion is supposed to do to them. Let's go.'

I walked alongside in a kind of dream. Above me fake Jacobean bell towers, mock medieval castellations and incongruously handsome gargoyles loomed down; beneath my feet cobbled pathways set in rose tarmac led us through the heart of this huge and magnificent village. The word provoked a vision in me of Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner, waking up in his little room in The Village. The camera zooming with period mania from ping-pong

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ball springing fountains to green copper cupolas; from miniature domed palaces to sneering stone cherubs. -Where am I?

-The Village. -Who are you?

-I am Number Two. -Who is Number One? -YOU are Number Six.

-I am not a number, I'm a FREE MAN.

We walked, Steve's arm through mine, into a gatehouse, ancient in style but solid and clean and new, and emerged onto a street, busy with traffic.

It took a second for the point to sink home. 'Jesus,' I said. 'The cars ...'

'Hey, c'mon, Mikey. Calm down, will you? There's nothing to worry about. We'll cross the street further down.'

'But where are we) This isn't England!' 'Oh God, Mike.'

I looked at him, trembling and afraid, and saw my fear reflected in his face.

Tears sprang into my eyes. 'I'm sorry ... I'm sorry! But I really don't know what's going on. Why do you know me when I don't know you? And the traffic. It's driving on the right-hand side of the road. Where are we? Please, where are we?'

He stood in front of me, a hand on each of my shoulders, and I could sense him fighting down his own panic and a desire, as people passed by staring, to be miles away from such a howling mess. He spoke to me in a raised voice, as you talk to the deaf, the foreign and the insane.

'Mike, it's okay. I think you bumped your head last night and I think maybe it's screwed up your memory. You're talking a little crazy, but it's okay. Look at me. Come on, look at me, Mikey!'

My voice shook in a treble whine. 'But where am I? Please! I don't understand where I am.'

'I'm gonna take you to see a doctor now, Mikey. So just come along with me, 'kay? Everything's fine. You're

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in Princeton, where you should be, and there's nothing to get hot under the collar about, okay?'

Military History

The Frenchman and the Colonel's Helmet: II

'It's hot. It's boiling hot and still they insist we wear these tunics.'

Hans Mend scuffed his boots along the duckboards in the direction of the forward trench, loudly and breezily damning the generals. Ernst Schmidt beside him remained as resolutely silent as usual, offering as comment only the occasional wheeze from his gasinjured lungs.

'Mind you,' said Hans. 'Even if someone did explode a howitzer up their arses they would probably manage to claim it as a tactical victory. And another thing,' he went on, after leaving a polite pause for comment, a pause he knew would go unfilled. 'Franzmann and that twicedamned helmet. Something must be done. Our Franconian puppies need to be led by example. They should be shown that we Bavarians do not take this kind of insult lying down. A revenge must be exacted. A lesson must be taught.'

'Talk is easy,' said Schmidt.

Hans dug Ernst cheerfully in the ribs. 'Then you should try it more often! Hey? Hah!'

'It achieves nothing.'

'On the contrary, it passes the time, exercises the lungs and sharpens the mind.'

'It's talk that is losing us this war.'

'For God's sake, Ernst!' Hans looked about him nervously. 'We're not losing this war. Militarily we are doing well, we have a clear advantage, everyone knows that. It is only on the home front that we are losing. Morale is being fucked by the Bolsheviks, the pacifists and the artist queers.' 'Someone being fucked by artist queers?' A cheerful voice behind them. 'Not another Prussian scandal, surely? That's all we need.' Rudi Gloder came up between them and clapped a hand to the shoulder of each.

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Hans and Ernst snapped to a salute. 'Herr Haupt-mann!' 'Cut that out,' said Rudi with a shy smile. 'Only salute when other officers are watching. So tell me, what is this talk of artist queers?'

'Morale, sir,' said Hans. 'I was saying to Schmidt how morale is being undermined back home.'

'Hm. Good choice of word. The enemy at home is using the same techniques as the enemy in France. Sapping and undermining are all any of us do in this war. The arts of twentieth century battle are not something our dear leaders understand. Fortunately, our foemen understand them even less.'

Foemen! Hans thought there was something boyishly earnest and entirely loveable in Rudi's typical and apparently self-contradictory introduction of an antiquated Wagnerian word like 'foemen' into a conversation about modern warfare.

'Those swinish Franzmdnner understand it all right,' said Ernst gloomily.

Rudi cocked an eyebrow. 'How so?'

'I think he's referring to the Frenchman and the Colonel's Helmet.'

'The Frenchman and the Colonel's Helmet?' said Rudi. 'Sounds like the title of a cheap farce.'

'You won't have heard about it yet, sir,' said Hans.

'You messengers always get the news fresh. We lowly trench rats have to digest it after it's been chewed and spat out all down the line.'

'Well, sir, what happened was this. One of the men watching the enemy trenches this morning saw Colonel Baligand's Pickelhaube, his best Imperial lobster-tail, being waved triumphantly backwards and forwards on the end of a rifle. They must have captured it in the raid on Thursday.'

'French bastards,' said Rudi. 'Arrogant pigs!'

'Do you think we could devise some way of getting it back, sir? For morale?'

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'We must! It is a question of the pride of the regiment. We must retrieve it and return with a trophy of our own. These piss-blooded children of the Sixth have to be shown how real men fight.'

'Yes, sir. But Major Eckert would never consent to any direct action for such a purpose.'

Rudi rubbed his chin. 'You may be right about that. Major Eckert is, when all's said and done, a Franconian. This needs thinking about. Where was this cocky Monsieur?' 'Just to the north of their new battery position,' said Hans, pointing. 'Sector K.'

'Sector K? Those were our trenches once, weren't they? We dug the bastards ourselves four years ago. I've half a mind ... Schmidt, what the helfc'

Hans stared in disbelief at the sight of Ernst grabbing hold of Rudi's arm and tugging on it.

'Sir, I know what you're thinking and it is out of the question!' said Ernst.

'How dare you assume any such thing?' 'Sir, you must not. Really, you must not!'

Rudi removed the hand calmly, something, it seemed to Hans, between annoyance and amusement creasing the eternal smoothness of his brow. 'Ernst,' he said, 'how well named you are!'

'Certainly, Herr Hauptmannl' said Ernst, unrelenting. 'And I must assure you ... ich meine is mit bitterem Ernst.'

Rudi smiled and sang softly, 'Ernst, Ernst, mein Ernst! hnmir so ernsthaft ernst!'

'Forgive me, sir, but I know just what you were considering. And it won't do, sir, really it won't.'

'How could you possibly know?'

'I know, I just know. I know your courage, sir. But it is too dangerous. We could easily afford to lose a colonel's helmet, twenty helmets, twenty colonels even, but ...' Ernst's coarse face reddened and thickened with emotion and Hans saw tears in his eyes, '... we could never afford to lose you.'

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