The Carhullan Army

selves. They were not so far apart from the ones left behind and they knew it. I was the best argument Jackie Nixon could make for solidarity, for intervention, and for hope among the people. She had made a soldier out of me without even giving me back my father’s gun.
    She took hold of my face and kissed me, like the others had done when I first came down the stairs, and I sat back down. I was glowing, and the heat in me radiated outwards. I felt as if bellows had been placed between the bars of my ribcage and the coals of me blown into full flame. Nobody touched me or said anything. Not even Shruti.
    Ruthie busied herself with the meal. A group went out to the dairy and half an hour later brought in a quantity of fresh strained milk. After the sago was ladled, and the women were all fed, the distress in the room seemed lessened. Jackie talked more of her plan, and the women listened. Perhaps it had begun to dawn on them that she was their best chance of survival now. Once they might have thought her grandiose and eccentric, pessimistic in her visions. Once they might have believed her to be malfunctioning. In the dormitories and within my work group I had heard talk of her aggression and paranoia, her obsessions, the chronic symptoms of military damage. And I had seen for myself her blue flinty eyes glinting with too much intensity when she spoke about combat.
    But now she did not seem so touched by mania. I could tell those listening were less dismissive of her ideas than they might usually have been. She had revealed herself to be the realist, and the sceptics had been proved wrong. If the rest of us felt weary and wrung-out, the night’s events had served only to invigorate and embolden her. It was not that she was wired from lack of sleep and exhaustive discussion, from the adrenalin of emergency. She was simply confident. There was now something commensurate to her capabilities, something which she was truly qualified to tackle.
    I will not forget that morning. It was the morning of her annunciation, her arrival. In the squalor of the terrace quarters, missionaries had often gone from door to door, preaching, and some people had turned once again to religion for escape. If they could not be lifted from the ruins by those in charge, then they would be rescued by God, by his rapture. There were faith cards tacked to every lamppost and pushed through every letterbox; American-sponsored leaflets were distributed at the factory and the clinic, and every shipment of food was bound with prayers. Others went to the dealers, slipped God into their veins, cracked open ampoules of bliss, and left the world behind for a time. People wanted to believe. People wanted to be exalted.
    And perhaps I too had been looking for a messenger, looking for a path to take. I don’t know. But there was the cut of a prophet about Jackie Nixon that morning. The light altered about her as she spoke, she drew it to her, and her eyes stole from it. I knew that what she was saying was right, that she was leading the way, and for the second time in my life I put my faith in her.
    ‘I see you all looking around, counting how many of us there are,’ she said, ‘wondering if there are enough, wondering if it’s even possible and how far we could see it through. I can’t give you any comfort. I can’t make any promises. And I can’t tell you we’ll see it through to the end. What I can tell you is this. History has always turned on the actions of a few individuals. History is on our side. You can do this.’
    She was armed with examples from which we could take heart. If we thought a campaign was hopeless we should think again, she said. Afghan guerrillas had not only defeated the strongest military force on the planet, they had contributed to the USSR’s disintegration. The British had lost more people to the IRA than they had during the Suez campaign, the Falkland conflict and the first Gulf war combined. Coalition forces were still suffering heavy losses in South America and China. They could not quash the rebels; their forces were too cumbersome, too conventional. And in the second wave of extremist attacks, ten men with detonation devices and a moderate amount of explosive had paralysed London’s infrastructure for over a month. They had blown up two Southern dams, and two stadiums. They had never been caught.
    She was qualified. The others knew it as well as I did. All personal histories eventually revealed themselves at