Harvey

in the pub, at my little table, yesterday’s paper screaming about Blair’s little love note to Bush — Tony, I’ll hold your coat while you blow up the world — a warm gin and tonic sweating like a guilty priest, and a tin of cashews gone soft because who gives a fuck.

The country pretends it’s shocked. Same country that swallowed every other lie with a grin, now all gasping and pearl-clutching. Spare me.

Down at the Prince Albert the lights are low, books nobody reads rotting on the shelves, cracked tiles, a dusty stack of seventies vinyl going twenty pence a pop for the legion. The place smells of spilled ale and old smoke. The house is quiet, dead quiet, just the old man next door muttering about lamb stew and new kitchen tiles like the world isn’t on fire. No radio, no Sinatra, no nothing. Just the low hum of people pretending everything’s normal.

She’s in the corner, all in black, hair gone grey too early, doodling circles on a soggy coaster, pint untouched, poppy on her coat like a drop of blood that never dries. On the table a small oak frame: Harvey in his 6th Regiment kit, twenty-two years old, grinning like death was still a joke.

A dozen old boys shuffle over and drop a fat envelope beside her — coins clinking, a few crumpled notes, a couple of cheques in shaky pensioner handwriting. On the front it says, For Harvey.

Three weeks of rattling buckets and guilty consciences. She doesn’t cry. She just stares at the picture while the envelope sits there like a coffin nobody asked for. Monumental lies, weapons of mass destruction, a million dead, give or take.

change from the jukebox,
that will fix it, Mrs. Humphreys,
that will bring him back.