This Other Country (16 page)

There was an uneasy silence in the room, until Samuel suddenly blurted out, “I knew you weren’t gay! Wow! Oh, my God, is this, like, a covert operation or something?—no! I know! We’re all on reality TV! Oh, my God, this is like Big Gay Brother or I’m A Gay Guy Get Me Out Of Here! Oh, God, wait till I tell Noah! He’ll be…What? I’m talking too much, aren’t I? But I knew you weren’t gay.
Awesome
.”

Nikolas couldn’t repress a small smirk of triumph to Ben at Samuel’s clear recognition he wasn’t gay but then held each of the other men’s eyes for a moment with his cool gaze. “A friend of ours has gone missing. We think it’s something to do with this course—or rather what comes after it. Some men who’ve attended it have stayed on for another three weeks—”

The universal chorus of dismay at this idea silenced him and all asserted nothing would make them stay longer than the allotted week. This was the first time Nikolas had thought about this, but it made sense. Whatever it was that tempted men to stay on, it clearly happened after this experience. Perhaps this night out as gay men in a very unfriendly environment acted as some kind of watershed…What happened on the rest of the course to make men want to stay?

John suddenly laid down his knife and fork. “I don’t think tonight was supposed to go as it has. I mean, what would have happened if you guys hadn’t been there?”

Samuel paled. “I’d have been fucked if they hadn’t. That big Scottish fucker would’ve had me.” The talk returned to the fight and each telling wry stories over what they’d done or thought. Nikolas was silent, pondering something. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the licences he’d taken off the men in the pub. Scottish? It wasn’t particularly odd the man attacking Samuel had been Scottish, but it sparked his interest. It was odder still that one of them had been Polish. And how could the absence of the police and the non-appearance of the injured men at the hospital be explained? He fanned the licences out on the table. Not one of the men lived in Burnley. Besides the one who lived in Glasgow, all came from London. The other men were beginning to drift back to their rooms to take the opportunity to shower before they left to return to the course. When they were gone, Ben went into the bathroom.

As soon as he was alone, Nikolas quickly called Kate and gave her the names and addresses on the licences. He stayed on the line as she checked them out. After the first two, Nikolas told her he’d call back and clicked off.

Actors.

Actors
.

All with Facebook profiles and easy to find.

He was about to call out to Ben when he thought back to the fight in the bar—the damage Ben had done to the men. Ben could be funny about things like this. His damn conscience would get in the way again. If Ben knew they’d only been actors…That they’d both misread the situation so incredibly badly…That he’d effectively allowed hunger to override his sixth sense for danger…

Therefore, when Ben came out of the bathroom, rubbing his wet hair with a towel, Nikolas disclosed nothing about his discovery. He slid the incriminating evidence into the backpack and pretended he’d been watching something interesting in the grounds.

Ben asked if he was going to shower.

Nikolas nodded, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was still thinking. “What makes people join together?”

“Huh?” Ben had discarded the towel and was sniffing suspiciously at his shirt with a wrinkled nose.

“What turns individuals into groups?”

“Common purpose, I guess. Having things in common. This shirt is fucked. Why are you—?”

“Fear. It’s fear and anger.”

“To achieve what?”

“Radicalisation.”

Ben’s eyes rose. “You think this is a training camp to radicalise us?”

“Do you know what the first step in the radicalisation process is? It’s creating the perception of injustice or humiliation. I think we were supposed to come back to the course humiliated, sick with our weakness, angry at those who made us feel weak—who humiliated us.”

“Bloody hell. So we turn back up supposedly humiliated and angry…then what?”

“That’s a very good question. Shall we go and find out?”

§ § §

It occurred to Nikolas on their return to the large Victorian house that whichever way the evening had gone—humiliation or fighting back—the outcome appeared to be much the same. The other group appeared as shell-shocked and as angry as they did, only without the broken bones and other evidence of the fight. John quickly discovered from Mark that they’d similarly found themselves deposited at a pub. They’d been jeered at, pushed around and eventually made to crawl out with their jeans and shorts lowered, arses bare. It had been the single most humiliating and unpleasant experience of Mark’s life he’d told them—and he taught health and hygiene to Year Elevens. Perhaps this group was less angry and more defeated than Nikolas and Ben’s group, but it was a close thing.

Doctor Atwell didn’t make an appearance for an hour. Nikolas guessed he might be taking furious phone calls from suing actors. He wondered what was next in store for them. He knew what he’d do next—had done to his recruits. For was this not just like creating a solider? He couldn’t help but smile therefore when Ben leant closer and predicted in a subdued voice, “They’ll turn our anger at them into anger against the real enemy now.” It was amazing how similar they thought sometimes, given they thought differently about almost everything.

Nikolas turned so their heads were even closer together and murmured, “But who is the real enemy?”

They found out. Doctor Fergus Atwell marched into the room, slammed the door behind him and asked angrily, “When was the last execution for sodomy in this country, gentlemen? Anyone?”

After a few nervous glances, John hesitantly offered, “Henry the Eighth’s time?”

He got a derisive gesture of dismissal. “Anyone else?”

Samuel suggested, “Elizabeth? The Catholic thing?”

No one else volunteered a guess after the look he was given. The doctor clicked a small device in his hand, and an image appeared on the wall in front of them—a scene of a hanging. “1835, gentlemen. Two young men meeting in private were seen through the window of their room. They were reported, arrested, sentenced to death, and hung. Seventeen other men were also sentenced to be executed that month—rapists and murders every single one of them—but all seventeen had their death sentences revoked. Mercy for everyone except James Pratt and John Smith. They were hung publicly. Unusually large crowds turned out to watch. What was their crime? Love. Their crime was
love
.”

Nikolas reckoned therapy was over.

For the rest of the day, the tired, depressed, angry group was subjected to a prolonged and intensive lesson about the consequences of being different. The historical stuff was bad enough. There were only so many descriptions of decapitations, burnings and stonings they could take. But at least the stories were remote, illustrated only by faded line drawings or contemporary sketches. But after lunch (where no one felt like eating, even Ben), the historical gave way to the current, and that was very hard to take, even for Nikolas, who’d seen most ways evil men can inflict pain and misery upon those with less power than themselves.

The past abuses had made them angry, but not…complicit. Watching these current events unfold, it was far more difficult to distinguish between
them
and
us
. After all, was it not true that the only thing evil needs to triumph is for
good men
to do nothing? What had any of them ever done about the evil they were now shown? Live burials for gay men in Afghanistan; stonings in Algeria; beatings, torture and electroshock treatment in Egypt; young gay teenagers cut in half or thrown off buildings in Iran; Somalia, a teenager buried up to his neck and stoned to death—a more severe punishment than for murder; five thousand children in British schools currently being taught that gay men should be put to death; a British television channel advocating gays should be tortured and murdered; Uganda, gay men forced into tyres, set alight, and rolled down streets; Baghdad, gay men’s rectums glued up as they were force-fed laxatives until they literally exploded—the bodies left in the street for the dogs. And all of this illustrated with photographs and video.

§ § §

Ben had experienced the religion of peace up close and personal for most of his working life, so much of this didn’t come as a shock to him. When the doctor began on Russia, however, he was appalled. He’d had no idea. Young men sodomised with bottles and set on fire; gay men hunted by vigilante groups—and all of this with no Stone Age religious bigotry to cause it. It was a political hatred; a belief inspired by a collective imperative to seek an outsider, to say all humans must see the world the same way and those who don’t are abnormal. That such deviance must be rooted out…In one video, Soviet army officers stood around watching a young recruit being beaten to death by other recruits. Ben didn’t follow that one too closely. He didn’t want to see a familiar face amongst those watching.

Tea came and went. A few of the group drank some, but no one wanted the biscuits. After tea, came the movie. Neither Nikolas nor Ben had ever watched a gay movie—other than ones with men who, by and large, hadn’t been cast for their acting ability—and perhaps because of the emotional exhaustion of the day, it surprised and disappointed them the men were separated by death at the end—a conclusion which, the doctor was at pains to point out, was a feature of almost all gay movies. The message was clear, he claimed: for all its liberal pretensions, the film industry was about dollars. Money came from majorities, however vociferous a minority might be. They played with gay love but would never portray it as being a valid alternative to that which paid their salaries.

Then it was supper, and they were allowed to go to their rooms and clean up beforehand—the first time other than necessary bathroom breaks they’d left their classroom. Ben came automatically into Nikolas’s room, and they sat side by side on the bed, contemplating their shoes for a while. Ben eventually asked in Danish, “Have we ever supported a gay organisation with ANGEL?”

Nikolas shrugged. “Not specifically. No one has asked.”

“Would you if they did?”

Nikolas repeated his gesture. It said a lot. He turned then and took Ben’s face in his hands, and for the first time Ben felt a huge surge of anger at the realisation that had he been in another country with different rules, he would be made to feel unclean about the terrible desire he felt for a kiss from this man.

With profound relief he saw a similar thought flicker across Nikolas’s face. Instead of bringing their mouths together, Nikolas continued to cup Ben’s face, staring into his eyes. He stroked his thumb thoughtfully over Ben’s cheekbone. “If I’d met you in Afghanistan and killed you, I’d have been given another medal. If I’d kissed you? Loved you?” Then he dropped his hands and added a little sulkily, “But this doesn’t affect us. We live our lives as we wish and no one can stop us.”

Ben slumped a little alongside him. He didn’t do deep thought about anything, never had, but that
insularity
seemed wrong to him somehow. “That would be like us in our hut in the Philippines, in the green glow of our tropical snow globe…if the tsunami had happened around us and we’d just stayed in the hut, ignoring it. There
is
a tsunami happening around us, and we’re caught in it just as much as we were in that one. Maybe we should help with this one as well.”

Nikolas smiled sadly. “I think you’ve been radicalised.”

“And you?”

Nikolas appeared to think about this for a long time. All he concluded was, “I’d have chosen a different ending for that film.”

“Happy ever after?”

Nikolas laughed ruefully. He pursed his lips. “Imagine what all this would do to a young man like Michael’s nephew. It makes more sense now that he targeted the Islamists at his university.”

“Get them before they got him?”

“Possibly.”

“And he had three weeks more of it.”

“Yes. I think he did. I wonder what criteria they’ll use to separate us tomorrow. Those who stay and those who go?”

Ben frowned. “Won’t they try to persuade everyone to stay? Join their cause?”

“I wouldn’t. Not everyone has violence in them. It doesn’t matter what the provocation, some men wouldn’t retaliate.”

“But we’ll be asked. We’re kinda…ideal?”

Nikolas shrugged again. “I wouldn’t recruit me, no.”

“Huh?” For one moment, a vision of Nikolas in Siberia flickered across Ben’s mind, blood-soaked, feral, grinning.

“I’m not the kind of person they want. I can’t be radicalised. I have no…beliefs.”

Ben frowned deeply. “Bollocks. You’re the most opinionated person I know—you have opinions about everything!”

There was too much truth in this for Nikolas to deny, but he replied calmly, “You’re missing the point. Belief isn’t the same as opinion. I think lots of things, but I believe in nothing. I wouldn’t fight for anything except that which affects me personally.”

Ben stared at him. He was about to contradict this appalling declaration, but the more he thought about it, the more he saw the truth of it. Nikolas had fought many times in the years he’d known him—he’d killed many times as well. But each time it had been to protect something that mattered personally to Nikolas.

Nikolas suddenly nudged him with a smirk. “Besides, I’m not gay, so why would they ask me to join their little rainbow army?”

Ben didn’t smile in return but asked in a low, serious tone, “What about me? You think they’ll ask me?”

“I think I’d want you
leading
my cause. You’re the ultimate poster boy for the new model army.” He pouted ruefully. “Perhaps it’s the ultimate proof of what you call fate—that you’re a warrior, that you’re so charismatic and beautiful. And that you are, in fact, gay.”

A silence fell between them. For two men who’d joined their bodies in the most intimate way two men can for over eight years, it was something of a revelation for both of them to realise this was the first time they’d ever discussed these things. Ben had never seriously been called gay before. It was as much of a shock for him to hear it as it had been for Nikolas to be called a faggot. And it was Nikolas calling him this. It was hard to think of a response. What do you say when the man you sleep with calls you gay? Hesitantly, he challenged, “Whatever I am then you are as well.”