Read My Little Armalite Online
Authors: James Hawes
My Little Armalite
JAMES HAWES
7: Thank You, Sir, and Goodnight
18: A Shit-Hole Run by the Red Army
26: A Thick Bed of Liberal Broadsheet
29: The Home of the Black Rifle
31: The Irrational Fear of Physical Violence
32: A Lump of Metal from the World of Men
33: The Genetic Make-up of London
48: Tons of Flab Wobbling About in a Big Net
54: A Black, Bloody Insurrection
55: A Deep and Very Middle-European Ditch
59: The Shock Outrunning All Pain
62: A Little Speed Hump for Real-Estate Speculators
63: Leader, Lead: We Demand to Obey!
65: Like any Good Teutonic Politician
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781407014609
Published by Vintage 2009
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Copyright © James Hawes 2008
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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Jonathan Cape
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To Nerys Lloyd and our three sons
James Hawes is the author of five novels, including
A White Merc With Fins
and
Speak for England
. He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University and lives in Cardiff.
A White Merc With Fins
Rancid Aluminium
Dead Long Enough
White Powder, Green Light
Speak For England
Darling, it's three a.m. and I'm sitting here in my clever little study area under our stairs, just where I should be. But I'm afraid I'm not working on the Very Important Paper. Instead, I'm recording this prologue, headset in place and hands free for ⦠well, listen.
Do you know that sound? Of course not. Let's hope you never will. But millions of living men know it just as our ancestors knew the knap of flint on flint, the screech of blade on whetstone, the drone of bombers overhead. The soft click of shells being thumbed home against the surprisingly gentle spring of a â¦
That noise again outside! Now,
that
one you know all too well. A carful of hooded little sods snarling and rapping past, rattling our Victorian sashes. At three a.m.! So much for
on the borders of the conservation area
. Yes, OK, cities have alway been noisy, but the Pooters only had trains to ignore, not deliberately unsilenced primate bloody braying. Even uPVC units would only dull it, but uPVC is obviously out of the question and we simply
can't afford
quality double-glazed hardwood sashes right now. Even if we wanted to invest even more in a depreciating bloody asset. So we say (especially to ourselves) that you get used to the noise, that we hardly notice it, that it's just part of life in this vibrant, diverse â¦
Fuck, ow! Sorry, darling, shit,
that
noise was me banging my head on the underneath of the staircase. Again! I know, I know there was nowhere else for my desk to go, even with no piano for you. I'm not saying
there
was
, it's just that â¦
hardly notice
? It's three bloody a.m.! We've got a baby scarcely sleeping through, kids to get to school, careers to service.
Hardly notice?
Christ, when
we
were twenty (which isn't
that
long ago!) you had to shove a half-warmed kleftikon around a dirty plate if you wanted a drink after eleven. At midnight, London (where ordinary people could afford to buy in Zone 2) was settling to sleep. By four in the morning (which we hardly ever saw, even at twenty) the streets were patrolled only by defenceless milk bottles. And now? Now midnight is just the start for the uppers-raddled shits whose little brothers and half-brothers and step-brothers will make our darlings' schooldays hell if I don't do something fast. What was so bloody bad about grammar schools anyway? Oh, if those little
fuckers
⦠Sorry, darling, but, well, if they knew that I could walk out now and just put a whole clip right through their tinted bloody windows and into their stinking â¦
⦠Sorry. Not very liberal. I admit that it's hard to restrain myself from employing my new skills. When you know that you
can
do something, morality easily follows suit. But my sights are set higher than tactical victories, however tasty. A prophet armed at last, I'm aiming for the only thing any of us can do, nowadays: I'm going to make
bloody
sure that our own darlings are ahead of the pack when the ice caps finally melt, the floodgates burst and the border guards tear off their uniforms, throw down their guns and run.
Of course, there's a chance it'll blow up in my face.
Not literally, I mean. But figuratively it's possible. My cover story of Muslim extremists is good and timely. In the present funding-friendly climate it's hard to see why any thinking copper would
want
to challenge it. But I still might get caught.
In which case you'll need financial support. Which is why I've recorded my story for you to sell. I don't believe my fate will be without some resonance. The world must be full of ex-lefties riddled with despair, bafflement and shame. If it isn't, it's full of cretins. This might tide you over until my pension kicks in. As far as I know they can't strip me of my superannuation rights for having stepped a wee bit beyond the liberal consensus! Knowing that you're financially catered for, I'll sit happily in my prison cell, vastly respected by my stupid and violent companions due to the
nature of my offences
, as smooth and smug as those men in every life-insurance junk-mail flyer: men who have
provided for their loved ones adequately
and
protected their mortgage
.
Christ, that bloody word again, that primal scream of our times!
What? Did we ask for the earth? For gravel drives, lofty gables, double fronts and all-round gardens? No. All we wanted was the sort of everyday thing navvies chucked up by the tens of thousands all over north London between Dickens and Hitler to house medium-grade clerks. Just the usual modest period semi, for God's sake, with a pair of tallish bays and four half-decent bedrooms, set ten feet or so back from the pavement of an averagely quiet residential street within realistic toddler-wheeling distance of a fair-sized park with the standard ducks and suchlike in any, repeat
any
, repeat
any, old
part of Zones 2 or 3 that lies a safe-ish height above sea level and diesel fumes, with ordinary human neighbours who sleep at night and reasonable schools where our children will not go in fear because they speak normal bloody English.
Well?
Sorry?
Was that really so much to ask in return for twenty years' unbroken CV in a highly respectable graduate career?
Ah.
I see.
Of course. Silly me. I was forgetting we've committed a mortal sin that will blight the rest of our lives and our children's too:
we didn't buy a house in London last millennium
. End of family story. Social mobility crash-stops. History swallows us up.
Oh, but I think not.
Do you hear this noise, darling?
Listen.
Cthlick!
I'm pressing the last round down. My clip is full.
So be it. The world has chosen to renege on the clear agreement I made with it back in nineteen eighty-four. All I am doing is setting things right. There is a fine Anglo-Saxon tradition which holds that crime is in fact not crime, riot not truly riot and even revolution not really revolution at all when it aims merely to restore good old normality.
Result? Happiness.
If all goes well tomorrow, if my gun doesn't jam and shoots straight, if I don't lose my nerve at the vital moment (which would be quite understandable), none of the friends who will, in the fine years to come, gather from the neighbouring streets to eat no doubt organic meat and drink good red wine around our big old table in our high-ceilinged home whilst we discuss the burning cultural and political issues of the day, guided, as we have ever been, by the wise and liberal comments in
The Paper
that morning, will ever suspect me. We'll simply have become what we always were, round pegs in round holes, with no gap
for darkness to shine through. Even you'll never know.