For Those Who Dream Monsters (5 page)

As soon as Pierre saw the tank, he fell madly in love with it. It was large and
chunky, its rotting green paint barely covering the blood-coloured flecks of
rust beneath. Pierre ran his hand over the gun barrel, wincing as he caught his
finger on a sliver of flaking paint. He sucked his bleeding finger and ran his
other hand over the side of the tank, his eyes glowing like those of a
schoolboy who’s just realised that toads pop when you blow them up with a
straw.

Not
many people remembered the time before the war, but Pierre did. He remembered
when a travelling cinema had come to the nearest town. He’d borrowed a donkey
from one of his neighbours and ridden to see it. The film showing was
The
Exorcist
. The other locals had walked out in protest, some of the women had
fainted, and a little boy got possessed and had to be taken to the local priest
after the screening. But Pierre was in seventh heaven: thrilled, terrified,
moved – one emotion after another and all at once. He rode out to town every
day for the three days before the cinema was closed down and the projectionist
thrown out of town for blasphemy and attempting to corrupt the God-fearing
locals. It was during the third and last screening that Pierre realised his
life’s ambition: to be able to say ‘your mother sucks cocks in hell’ in every
language on earth. From that day on, until war broke out, he worked towards
fulfilling his ambition and tried out the language skills he was acquiring on
any tourist who passed through this godforsaken part of the world. Pierre often
sported a black eye.

Then
war broke out. Pierre’s village avoided most of the violence, but hunger,
poverty and disease took their toll. Now life was slowly returning to normal –
the village school had re-opened, the villagers had started to rebuild their
livelihoods, but they were still heavily dependent on outside help and would be
for many months to come.

Mr Wyndham-Smythe of Kensington had broken his vow never to suffer going on the
tube again, and was sitting, handkerchief held firmly over his nose and mouth,
among the coughing commuters and excited tourists, when he noticed the Giftaid
poster directly opposite him. He had already read all the other posters – twice
– but somehow this one had eluded his gaze, perhaps – as is often the case in
life – by merit of being directly in front of him.

‘That’s
the family and its conscience taken care of,’ it proclaimed. ‘Buy a goat or
some chickens from Farm Africa for £10.’ The poster went on to explain that an
enterprising blacksmith could convert a decommissioned tank into 3,000 farm
implements for a poor African village.

Mr
Wyndham-Smythe didn’t like animals, particularly smelly farmyard animals tended
to by dirty farmers. He found weapons and militaria much more appealing. Ever
since his father had sent him to military academy and he had met Dick, the
young Wyndham-Smythe was fascinated by all things military. Dick had humiliated
him, played practical jokes on him, beaten him and urinated on him, and
Wyndham-Smythe had loved every miserable minute. As old memories came flooding
back, Mr Wyndham-Smythe reflected on his life, and his thoughts turned to his
children, William and Henrietta. Henrietta had been pestering him all year for
a Sony widescreen laptop with 32X Re-write DVD drive, and all William could
talk about was an X-box. Well … not this year. This year William and Henrietta
would learn about the true spirit of Christmas.

“Pierre? … Pierre!” The blacksmith had been daydreaming: imagining himself
driving through the village in his perfectly polished, shining silver tank, the
other villagers eyeing him with admiration and cheering as he passed. Now the
village elder’s voice brought Pierre out of his reveries.

“Huh?”
Pierre took his hand off the tank and looked around, slightly dazed. The
village elder had called all the villagers together for an impromptu ceremony
in honour of the aid workers who had delivered the village’s allocation of western
aid and the donors who had funded the gifts.

“I
said that you,” the village elder told Pierre, “as the village blacksmith, will
be honoured to make tools out of the old tank, so that we will be able to till
our land again and grow our own crops.”

“Huh?”

The
village elder frowned at Pierre and turned back to the villagers, the aid
workers and the two truck drivers who had convoyed in the tank, rice and farm
animals.

“On
behalf of everyone in the village of Santa Maria Illuminosa Madre di Jesu
Crucifixio, I would like to thank the Giftaid Foundation and all of you for
bringing us help in our hour of need. We also extend our thanks to the people
of Great Britain, in particular to Mrs Jameson of Shepherd’s Bush for the goat,
Mr Thompson of Aberdeen for the chickens, and to Mr Wyndham-Smythe of
Kensington and his family for the tank.”

“Mr
Wyndham-Smythe of Kensington,” mouthed Pierre.

The village elder’s speech went on for some time and Alicia was starting to
feel nauseous again. She hadn’t been right since the incident in Utar Pradesh.
It had been dark and the aid truck she was travelling in hit what she and the
driver initially thought was a large black dog. Alicia got out of the truck to
see if it was still alive, and that was when it went for her. It all happened
so fast. Alicia saw the creature’s yellow eyes and large fangs as it sprang at
her throat. She managed to raise a hand to defend herself, but if it hadn’t
been for the driver leaping out of the truck and hitting the animal with the
cricket bat he kept next to his seat, it would have ripped her throat out for
sure. Instead, it reeled under the blow from the bat, then glowered at the two
humans and disappeared into the bushes.

“Are
you alright?” cried the driver, rushing over to Alicia and helping her to her
feet.

“I
think so.” Alicia inspected her bitten hand. The shock had not set in yet and
she was surprised at how clear her head was at that moment. “But the dog might
have had rabies,” she told the driver calmly. “I need to get to a hospital as
soon as possible.”

“Yes,
of course.” The driver helped her back into the truck, adding quietly, “But
that was no dog.”

Despite
what had happened in India, Alicia jumped at the chance to travel to Africa.
Since her husband had left her for a woman half her age, Alicia had thrown
herself completely into her charity work. She had been to India and to
Thailand, but Africa had always been the one place that she really wanted to
visit. That was where the starving children truly needed her, and the charity had
finally given in to her nagging and allowed her to join one of the aid convoys,
on the condition that she cover the cost of her own travel. Luckily she had
enough of her parents’ money left even after the divorce. But now that she was
finally here, she was not feeling herself.

A
skinny little boy caught Alicia’s eye and she smiled at the child, happy that
she was making a difference to his impoverished life. The boy’s eyes opened
wide and to Alicia’s dismay he burst into tears and pulled his hand out of his
mother’s grip, running for the shelter of one of the ramshackle huts
surrounding the dusty village square.

Alicia
swooned slightly in the heat and wiped her brow. As the village elder’s voice
swam in and out of her consciousness, she started to notice other sounds around
her: the agitated clucking of the chickens, the distant sound of a rat
scurrying though the bushes, the heartbeat of the goat they had brought and
which was now tethered with a piece of string held by one of the villagers. As
she listened, fascinated, to the goat’s beating heart, the animal turned to
look at Alicia and bleated in alarm. Perhaps at that very moment the wind
drifted in Alicia’s direction from where the animal stood, but Alicia was
surprised to find that she could smell the goat even at a distance of eight or
so metres. And the smell told her that the animal was afraid. Alicia found
herself salivating and wiped the corner of her mouth. She could hear the goat’s
heart beating faster and faster, and suddenly the animal was bucking in fear.
The goat tore itself out of the grasp of the astonished peasant and in its
confusion darted here and there among the villagers and their foreign visitors.
As if noticing the wasteland that stretched beyond the villagers’ huts, the
goat bolted towards it, seemingly oblivious to the small man and the tank that
stood in its way. The village elder spotted the goat’s intentions and yelled at
the blacksmith.

“Pierre!
Grab it, don’t let it get away!”

Pierre
took his eyes off the tank and saw the goat heading straight for him. He waved
his arms around and shouted at the terrified animal, causing it to swerve
around him, straight into a couple of youths who had been forced by their
parents to attend the village festivities. One of the boys threw himself nimbly
on the goat and wrapped his arms around its neck, bringing it to the ground,
where the villager who’d been made responsible for looking after it retrieved
it and stroked its head gently, whispering in its ear until it calmed down.

The
village elder concluded that it was time to wrap up the speeches for the time
being, and invited the villagers and the visitors to join him for dinner later
that evening. Slowly the villagers drifted chattering back to their huts, and
the aid workers followed their designated hosts back to their accommodation.
Only Pierre and one of the aid truck drivers remained. Jim had noticed Pierre’s
fascination with the old tank, and he wandered over to the blacksmith.

“Centurion
Mark 3,” Jim smiled at Pierre and patted the rusty tank. “Never thought I’d see
one of these outside a museum. Figured they’d all been converted to Olifants or
Semels in these parts.”

Pierre
nodded enthusiastically, happy that the driver spoke English – one of the few
languages in which the blacksmith could do more than just quote lines from
The
Exorcist
.

“I
bet she’s seen some action,” continued Jim. “Korea, ’Nam … there’s no telling
where she’s been.”

Pierre
was finding the lesson in world tank history a little hard to follow, but he
certainly recognised a fellow enthusiast when he saw one.

“And
this old girl could still do some damage.” Jim was on a roll now, happy to have
an eager listener who seemed to share his passion. He had retired from active
duty a year or so earlier, and his new colleagues did not understand his
fascination with tanks or appreciate his fine collection of tank badges, gun
parts, and even shells of various shapes and sizes. Had any of the aid workers
– or indeed his bosses at the transport company – known about the live tank
shells he’d picked up and was now carting about in the back of the aid truck,
he’d probably be spending his next holidays at Her Majesty’s pleasure. “I’ve
had a little look under the bonnet,” Jim lowered his voice conspiratorially,
“and, just between you and me, her cannon hasn’t even been spiked.”

Pierre
smiled, perplexed, and decided to steer the conversation in a direction that he
hoped would be a little easier to keep up with.

“You
like tanks?” he asked.

“I
was an engineer in the army,” Jim explained. “I spent some time in tanks…”

Pierre’s
eyes opened wide and an excited flush spread over his face. “You know drive
tank?” he asked, his childlike enthusiasm making the driver smile.

“Yes,
I can drive one of these.”

“You
teach me?”

“I
don’t know if that’s such a good idea…”

“Why?”
The disappointment in the little man’s face affected the driver in a way he
hadn’t expected. There was a naivety and innocence about the blacksmith, which
made Jim feel like he had given a sweet to a child, only to take it away again.

“Well,
for a start we would need some diesel.”

“Diesel?”

“Fuel
… for the tank to run on.”

“Oh
… yes,” Pierre looked crestfallen for a while, but quickly perked up. “You
have?”

“Excuse
me?”

“You
have diesel?”

“Well,
we have some in the trucks.”

“We
put in tank?”

“Well
…” the driver looked down at the little man and thought for a moment. “We do
have considerably more than we need. I guess you could have a bit of it…”

“Oh
thank you! Thank you!”

The rumbling sound split the balmy afternoon like summer thunder, waking the
villagers from their siesta and bringing them out of their huts, eyes wide with
fear and curiosity. The foreigners came out too, equally fearful, but less
curious – the unpleasant sound nothing new to those of them who had spent time
in combat zones.

“Pierre!”
The village elder did nothing to disguise his anger, but the blacksmith was in
no state to notice the emotions of others. He was riding high, head in the
clouds, the rest of him sat firmly in the Centurion Mark 3.

“Pierre,
what the devil are you doing?” Pierre responded to the elder’s exclamation by
waving happily. “It works!” he cried, “It works!” His smile faded as no one
apart from a couple of children waved back.

“You
get out of that tank right now, blacksmith! Or there will be hell to pay!” The
village elder looked ready to explode.