Six Poppies

Poppy #1

Poppy #1

They say that when you get a tattoo done you need to be able to ‘trust your artist’. That they should be someone who ‘speaks to you’. I have no idea what that means – only that I need to say something, and the words won’t come. This is the only way I can think of saying it, so here goes.

I push open the heavy glass door and an old-fashioned bell rings above my head. The same sound as the school bell – the distant clattering chime that told me I was already in trouble. I was always late.

Inside, the tattoo parlour isn’t what I was expecting. I imagined a doctor’s waiting room – a bit tired, with plastic chairs, dusty plants and a stack of out-of-date magazines. But it’s not like that at all. It’s more like one of those trendy hotels, all slate-grey walls and matching skirting boards, with a dark, shiny concrete floor. There’s a big, squishy velvet sofa that my bad knee is crying out for me to sink into and behind that, on the wall, an electric sign that simply says ‘Tattoo’ in blue neon.

A skinny young girl with a shaved blonde head is already sitting on the sofa. She smiles at me briefly before reaching into a bag at her feet and pulling out a magazine with a picture of Kate Middleton in her wedding dress on the cover.

While she flicks through the pages I stare at the huge tattoo on her upper arm – a long black scythe with an angry red blade and the words ‘Vampire Slayer’ snaked around it on a scroll. Crikey.

A door opens in the back and Barry, the tattoo artist, emerges.

‘You must be Carl,’ he says, warmly clasping my hand in his. It’s a firm, cool grip. Reassuringly so. This isn’t the sort of thing you want done by someone with trembling fingers and sweaty palms.

Barry looks at me steadily. His eyes are dark, but not troubled; not haunted by images he’d do anything to unsee, not ringed black and blue with fatigue. They’re nothing like the eyes I see when I look in the mirror.

He’s young and wiry, with a mass of dense curly hair pulled up into a knot on top of his head. He has substantial holes in his ear lobes plugged by copper rings – the sort you’d find in a plumber’s toolbox.

The lobes are so stretched the hole is definitely over a centimetre wide. How is that even possible? I realize I’m staring and quickly shift my attention back to his face.

He smiles, unphased, and holds up the sketch – or ‘flash’, as he calls it – of my tattoo. ‘Just checking you’re happy with the final drawing?’

I stare at it and feel my stomach tense. Am I really doing this? Deliberately inflicting a new wound on my already battle-scarred body? I take a deep breath and nod.

‘Let’s get started, then,’ he says.

He apologizes to the girl for keeping her waiting and says his colleague will be out in a minute, then he leads me to a small room at the back of the shop, its red walls plastered with flashes of Barry’s other tattoo designs.

Skulls clearly do brisk business. One is particularly disturbing: snakes spilling out of the top of it like brains, black crosses where pupils should be. It stares at me with eerie, emerald-green eyes. I wouldn’t want to bump into whoever had that tattoo done on a dark night.

But there are other, exquisitely beautiful designs too. Elaborate Chinese drawings I find bewitching and unfathomable. I stare at the symbols, fascinated, and wonder what they mean.

Barry clears his throat.

‘I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled,’ he says. Then he’s gone.

I take my lucky T-shirt off, the one I bought in Blackpool on Fridge’s stag do. We all bought T-shirts that day – me, Fridge, Cherub and Squadron. It was our last lads’ trip before being deployed, and we were all on such a high. Young enough and stupid enough to think we were untouchable.

Hanging it carefully on the silver metal hook behind the door, I brush the tips of my fingers over the letters emblazoned on the front: JOHNSON MOTORS MOTORCYCLES, 36 COLORADO BLVD, PASADENA CA .

It’s so worn now, there are holes under the armpits and on the seam of the neck, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It’s one of the last links left that connects me to my old life – the life I led before the war changed everything – and I cling to it like a child with a comfort blanket.

Turning back to face the bed, I see it’s covered in a layer of cling film. It looks like a scene off the telly where the murderer has carefully laid out plastic sheets, preparing to bash his victim’s head in.

A shiver runs down my back – the sort of shiver I used to feel before we went out on patrol. I steel myself, as I learned to do when I was on ops back then, and pick up the dark blue towel Barry has left folded neatly on the end of the bed. I lay it out in front of me, then gingerly ease myself down on top of it.

Barry comes back into the room whistling. ‘Ready?’

I nod, watching as he busies himself with his equipment.

‘Remember, we’re going to be at this for a while, so I hope you’ve had a good lunch,’ he says.

When Barry explained to me on the phone that the first session would take five hours, I was shocked. But it’s not as if I have anywhere else to be. This is the first date I’ve had in the diary for months.

‘All set,’ I say, remembering the dry cheese sandwich I’d forced myself to eat before leaving the house.

‘In that case, I just have one more question,’ Barry says. ‘Music?’

I smile, remembering.

‘“Boys Don’t Cry”. The Cure.’ Then I bury my face in the pillow.

I hear the snapping sound of rubber being stretched, like someone pulling on a balloon before they blow it up. It must be Barry putting on nitrile gloves, but I don’t look round. I don’t want to watch.

Robert Smith starts to sing. He sings about trying to hide his tears, about trying to laugh it off because boys don’t cry, and for a moment I’m back on Fridge’s stag do – singing this as we walk along the sea front in the pouring rain on our way back to the B&B. Six weeks before our first deployment.

I feel a sharp scorch of pain on my shoulder blade, followed by an intense vibration. Barry tells me to relax and to breathe slowly. His voice is warm and soothing.

There is a shocking realization of a needle being dragged across the skin on my back. When my brain catches up with the pain, it registers a stinging and burning and scratching sensation – like a dentist scraping away at the same tooth for too long – and I want to scream at him to stop.

Barry wipes something across my back. I recognize the distinctive sharp, musty odour of surgical spirit. It’s the smell of the medical room where we all went to have our shots for Afghanistan.

Cholera, diphtheria, hepatitis B, rabies. We had to have the lot. I flinched when the nurse jabbed the needle in, but at least it was over in seconds. And we were all together, like we always were, messing around. Everything was a joke back then.

But this – the pain of this doesn’t stop. Every time the needle pierces my skin it feels like it’s vibrating right through to my bone. It hurts so much it takes my breath away. My body starts shaking.

Barry stops.

He turns off the electric fan heater and, with an energetic shove, opens the window. The blast of cold air steadies me and I force myself to focus on the items on the metal medical trolley by the bed.

I study them as if trying to memorize them for one of those kids’ party games. A clear glass bottle of surgical spirit, some swabs and pads of cotton wool, a door key, a packet of spearmint Extra chewing gum and a mobile phone.

A couple of minutes later I’m ready for him to start again. And then, after another ten minutes, something happens. The adrenaline kicks in, like Barry said it would, and my breathing goes back to normal.

I zone out, like I used to do when I was out on patrol on the streets of Kandahar. When every fibre would be strained, anticipating the next attack. Alert for the moment when the villagers and their kids would suddenly disappear.

That was our cue. Silence but for the pounding of your heart, knowing it was about to kick off.

All at once I’m back there. The searing humidity. The parched, dry mouth. And the smell. The smell of heat, dust and sweat, that oh-so-familiar soup of fear. I can taste it.

The pain I feel in my back is almost soothing now. As if I’m finally getting my due …

And then it stops.

Barry – as if communicating from another dimension, I’m so spaced out – asks me if I’m okay.

It takes me a second to remember where I am, and then it hits me. The tattoo parlour.

‘Congratulations,’ he says. ‘The first one’s done.’ Smiling, he holds out a mirror. ‘Ready to take a look?’

Slowly, I raise myself up on the bed to face him, then peer over my shoulder to look in the mirror.

I stare at this new image of myself. At the violent red and the powerful black and the bright green that weaves in between. It has been drawn beautifully, much better than I’d dared to hope.

‘What do you think?’ Barry says after a moment.

‘It’s great,’ I say. ‘Really great.’

Because it is. It’s everything I need it to be.

Big.

Significant.

Permanent.

And shocking.

‘Thank you,’ I tell him, although a simple thank you doesn’t cover it, this vision of mine that Barry has somehow managed to bring to life.

He bows his head in acknowledgement, tells me to take it easy for a day or so, and warns me that the tattoo will start to dry out and peel, like sunburn. It may even scab over. Also, that it will itch like hell. Then he leaves me to get dressed.

I slip my lucky T-shirt over my head and follow Barry out to the front of the shop, where I pay up and arrange to see him again in a couple of weeks.

Outside, I check my watch. It’s early still. But I feel exhausted and a bit shaky, so I decide to head over the road to the pub. A whiskey will straighten me out.

Inside, I’m relieved to see there’s only one other bloke in there. I used to love a rowdy pub, being packed in with the lads, music blaring in the background. But these days my nerves are shot, and loud places make me feel on edge.

I’m constantly on the lookout for aggressive behaviour, but I don’t think the old boy nursing his pint of bitter or the young lad serving are going to give me any trouble.

I can’t sit with my back to a door – or window either – but as the place is nearly empty I settle myself on a stool where I can scope any movement behind me in the mirror above the bar.

I order a Jack Daniels.

In the background, Adele is belting her heart out. I listen as she sings about how they almost had it all.

The barman pushes my drink in front of me. I wait for him to move away and then I raise the glass in a toast, looking at myself in the mirror. As I lift my arm, I can feel the newly tattooed skin on my back prickling beneath my T-shirt. The pain gives me a burn of satisfaction.

I take a long gulp. The grainy taste takes me straight back to toasts made long ago.

‘To you,’ I say silently. ‘To all of you.’