Extracts from Graham's novels

 

 

Saigon Tea

 

Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour I'd wake up and there'd be nothing.

Eileen is sitting on the settee comfy and looking forward to the video she's brought back from the shop. Apocalypse Now. The man said it was really wild and really out there and was the best film on Vietnam he'd ever seen. A work of art from a great auteur, he said. Well, how can you go past that? She told him that if you are going to travel anywhere new it's best to be prepared and know what lies ahead. Aye, he had said, that was right enough and he hoped she enjoyed the film and that she had a good time in Vietnam.

Jimmy and Stella are occupying the chairs at opposite sides of the fireplace. Jimmy's sipping at a glass of Johnny Walker and she's got a vodka and orange on the side table next to her. Stella seems a bit happier since Eileen suggested they both join the boys in Saigon once they'd made sure it was safe for the likes of them to be wandering about, which she thought was a good idea because the less there is to worry about the better. And she could do with a break, she really could, what with the weans and Jimmy's drinking and the bills that just keep coming. Something to look forward to, eh?

Eileen's got the place nice, with the lights turned down low, and a few sandwiches and snacks on the coffee table, although why Frankie insists on putting out those black olives she doesn't know because nobody eats them except him, and maybe Jimmy when he's too drunk to notice otherwise.

Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. Each time I look around the walls get a little tighter. Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission and for my sins they gave me one.

Frankie strolls into the darkened room carrying a plate of sausage rolls. "Is that it started?"

"Ssshh," Eileen whispers. "This guy's not looking so well".

"Oh, I don't know, he looks all right to me," Stella laughs, winking at Eileen. "He can put his rocket launcher under my bed anytime."

In the shuttered daylight of his hotel room, Martin Sheen is naked and lost in a drunken martial arts ballet, each move exaggerated, as if he is dancing in slow motion. The background music by The Doors pursues and haunts him, and as it builds to a thundering crescendo he smashes his fist into the mirror in front of him before collapsing in a pool of broken glass and blood.

"My granny had a mirror just like that," Eileen says. "For the life of me I don't know what happened to it. I think my mother sold it when granny died. Got next to nothing for it, I bet."

Frankie leans forward from his spot next to Eileen on the settee." Is that Martin Sheen, Jimmy? Did you see him in Badlands with that Sissy Spacek? I kid you not, that boy can act."

"Aye, I think you're right. He's had a few too many though, whoever he is. You should never drink whisky during the day, especially if the weather's hot. Fucks you right up. Gies one ae they ham sandwiches, will ye?"

Stella is into her second vodka and orange as the four of them stare at the screen, saying nothing. They listen to themselves eat.

Martin Sheen is dragged into the shower and forcibly washed, then fed coffee by two other soldiers until he is in some sort of shape to appear before what looks like a group of senior officers.

Terminate? The Colonel?

You understand captain . . . that this operation does not exist, nor will it ever exist.

Jimmy leaps up from his chair, pointing excitedly at the television. "Hey, isn't that Harrison Ford there, telling Martin Sheen he has tae terminate the colonel's command?"

Frankie squints at the screen. "Aye, so it is." "Now we're talking, eh. Give old Indiana Jones a hat and a whip and he'll sort out that Colonel Kurtz, no danger."

"I think this film was made before he became Indiana Jones, Jimmy, so he cannae be Indiana Jones if he hisnae been invented yet," Stella points out, carefully inspecting the blurb on the back of the video box.
"Oh aye. Well that's just a case of bad planning. Those film makers should have thought ahead a wee bit, got old Indiana Jones in the game in the first place."

"Have another wee yin, Jimmy," Frankie says, handing over the bottle. "I think you need it."

I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it, yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable and plugged straight into Kurtz. Frankie, Eileen, Jimmy and Stella silently pass around the popcorn as Martin Sheen's boat ambles slowly up the river towards the Cambodian border. Eileen jumps when Sheen and his crew of misfits suddenly find themselves under a rain of gunfire from behind the thick blanket of trees lining the banks of the river. Stella screams when Sheen and Frederic Forrest stumble across a tiger in the jungle and scramble terrified back to their vessel. They all struggle to hold back tears when the soldiers slaughter a family of innocent Vietnamese, and they laugh as Sam Bottoms goes waterskiing from the back of the patrol boat.

"No much of a place, is it?" Eileen says, munching on a chocolate digestive biscuit.

"Reminds me of here in the mid-'60s," Jimmy says. "Except for the sunshine of course. I'll have one of those sausage rolls, thanks Stella, when you're finished wi' the plate."

"Go easy on that whisky, Jimmy, or it's you that'll be getting shot at," she replies.

"I'll look after myself thanks very much. You just keep an eye on those voddies you're throwin' back there."

"C'mon you two. My God, look at that," Eileen says squirming in her seat.

You smell that. Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

"That's Robert Duvall isn't it?" Jimmy says, looking over his shoulder to Frankie who's holding Eileen's hand and rustling about in a packet of cottage cheese and chives crisps.

"I think you might be right there, Jimmy, old son. Christ these crisps are shite. Pass those salt and vinegar, will you, pet?" he motions to Eileen.

"Mind ae him in The Godfather? The consiglione? It's not personal, Sonny, it's business!' Jimmy says excitedly, putting on his version of a New York accent.

With Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blasting out from his Air Cavalry gunship, Robert Duvall is pointing out some likely surfing spots to champion boardrider Sam Bottoms. A bridge is blown up, a village reduced to rubble and sticks, and napalm is blithely dropped on the nearby jungle, which instantly erupts in a nightmare of flames and smoke.

"So, that was what it was all about, the Vietnam War. The Americans just wanted to go surfing?" Eileen asks.

"Not quite," Frankie says. "But wars have been fought for less." "Looks like our kitchen at dinnertime, wi' a' that smoke an' that," Jimmy says laughing.

"Well you can cook your own bloody dinner from now on, Jimmy Stewart," Stella says, throwing half a cheese and pickle sandwich at him.

Robert Duvall has taken off his shirt and, arms on hips, is discussing the relative merits of long and short surfboards with Sam Bottoms. The beach around them is a slaughterhouse of dead and dying bodies, of women screaming and children crying as they watch their lives go up in stomach-churning, skin-peeling flames.

"Those poor people," Eileen says softly.

Slowly they sink into a disturbed torpor as the drink and the food take effect and the patrol boat winds sleepily and interminably up the river. They are caught up in another world. The oppressive heat makes them sweat, the unfamiliar squeals from the jungle make them nervous. They wipe their brows and drink heavily to ease their thirst. Their tongues are as dry as a dirt track in a desert town. Jimmy nods off and dreams he has jumped out of Robert Duvall's helicopter, but his parachute doesn't open and, as he falls, all he can see below are giant red flames that leap into the sky and snap at his feet. He wakes with a start and casts a quick glance around the room, relieved for the first time in his life to be in a housing estate in Glasgow. He takes a bite at an olive but quickly spits it out into the ashtray on the arm of his chair.

"These grapes are off" he says wiping his mouth with a tea towel.

The heads? You're looking at the heads? I, uh, sometimes he goes too far, you know. He's the first one to admit it.

Martin Sheen and Frederic Forrest and Sam Bottoms are the only soldiers who have managed to survive and make it to the end of the river. They struggle to absorb what they see around them. Severed heads on poles, thousands of half-naked natives staring malevolently back at them, fire,> smoke, mad monkeys ready to bite, Dennis Hopper, draped in cameras and drugged out of his mind. The place smells of evil. It rubs up against their skin.

"I read somewhere that Martin Sheen had a heart attack when he was making this film," Frankie says. "Aye, nae fuckin'' wonder. I'm ready to have a heart attack myself just looking at it," Jimmy says, rubbing his chest. "Maybe going tae Vietnam isnae such a great idea, Frankie. Maybe a bit of advice tae Danny sent through Her Majesty's Royal Mail might be the way to go here. Oh aye, wait a minute Mr Postman, an' a' that."

"I think things might have changed a wee bit, Jimmy. There's no war on for a start."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Look, Jimmy, Saigon's a big city. Seven million people. Things have picked up. It's even got buses, I hear. We'll be fine."

"You should take plenty of sunscreen though. It looks very hot there," Stella says, thoughtfully.

"Aye, thanks, Stella. Glad you reminded us. "I'd hate tae get sunburnt while some bastard's got my head stuck on a pole," Jimmy says.

"Sshhhh," Eileen says, leaning forward from the settee. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

Martin Sheen is belting the life out of a bloated Marlon Brando, each blow a silhouette against a flickering flame. Outside, the drums are mad and frenetic, and the eyes in the darkness sense the fate of their leader. Martin Sheen falls out into the night and the awestruck crowd parts Red Sea-like as he calmly makes his way back to the boat, collecting a painted and decorated Sam Bottoms on the way. The horror. The horror.

The video winds slowly to the end and clicks off the screen becomes a black void the soundtrack a monotonal buzz. Frankie and Eileen, Jimmy and Stella, sit for a few moments, saying nothing. Eileen clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"No exactly The Sound of Music, is it?" she says.

"I think you're right there, Eileen. I didnae see much in the way of lonely goatherds, did you?" Jimmy replies.

"No, I certainly did not. I'll put the kettle on, eh?"

"Aye, good idea. Better make the tea nice and strong, hen. I think we're goin' tae need it."