The Dark Tunnel and Other Plays
by
Pete Owen Williams
This dedication is to thank Ally for all the encouragement she gave me, reading and commenting on my work.
Published By:
Lens Flair Wales
http://www.lfwales.co.uk
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © Pete Owen Williams 2011
http://www.peteowenwilliams.co.uk
Table of Contents
1. The Dark Tunnel – A play for the stage
2. Wildebeest-A play for radio
3. Parsnip Wine-A play for radio
4. Matters of State-A play for the stage
5. Doomed to Witness-A Greek Tragedy monologue
6. Sitting On Top of the World-A monologue
7. Panic Attack-A film script
8. Inside Out-A play for the stage.
9. About the Author
10. About Lens Flair Wales
11. About SBS Records
THE DARK TUNNEL
A Stage Play
SCENE 1
[Sounds of a firework display-rockets, explosions, whoops of children. The stage is lit by a series of coloured flashes. The display ends with a huge flash and an enormous explosion. During this, Paul, a man in his fifties, dives onto the stage]
PAUL:
[Yelling] Get down! Keep your head down!
[He rolls over and lies in a prone position. BLACKOUT. Silence. The lights slowly come on and build to a seering white light. Paul slowly gets up. He looks around him. Embarrassed, he dusts himself down and starts downstage right and inspects the width of stage right, then across the back of the stage area. As he reaches upstage centre, Scott, a young man in his twenties comes on stage left. He stands to attention downstage left, salutes and moves to the ‘at ease’ position, rifle by his side. He stares impassively out over the audience. Paul continues his journey until he reaches Scott. He looks at the young man who continues to stare out over the audience. ]
PAUL:
This is a strange place.
[Pause]
SCOTT:
It is. For both of us. But my strange place is very different from yours.
PAUL:
How different?
SCOTT:
Because I am dead and you are not.
PAUL:
I suppose so.
SCOTT:
Your strange place is in your own head. An invention caused by your illness. Mine is all I have left.
PAUL:
What’s it like?
SCOTT:
Like this. Nothing. A blank empty space. A vacancy. A lacuna waiting to be filled. But it never will be.
PAUL:
You’re in it.
SCOTT:
Very temporarily. As soon as you and I have finished talking, I shall vanish forever, into the deepest nothing. And you will return home to Mum and the chaotic hell the war has left you with.
[Paul sits on the stage beside his son. Scott remains standing]
SCOTT:
It’s all gone Dad. All fucked up.
PAUL:
Ay. I know that son.
SCOTT:
I just don’t know why. I no longer know why we’re there. They don’t want us. The British people don’t want us there. The world’s press wants us to pull out. So, what’s the point?
PAUL:
Other people’s wars. Bush’s war. Blair’s war. Where are their kids? Well out of harm’s way. Where was Bush when National Service came along? Safe in the U.S. of A. Protected by Daddy.
SCOTT:
And Blair? The grinning vacant public schoolboy. Him and his wife earning fat fees while we got shelled, shot at, ambushed, blown up by cars. And they’ll get fatter fees now that he’s no longer Prime Minister. The lecture tours. The biographies. The peerage. How did the World War One song go? [Sings]
Onward Christian Soldiers,
Marching without fear,
With our bold commanders,
Safely in the rear.
PAUL:
But with you in spirit! That’s what they always say. “I’ll be with you in spirit, lads.”
SCOTT:
If he’d seen half I’d seen by the time I was 23, he’d have crapped himself all the way back to fucking Yorkshire!
PAUL:
After the 1991 war, when I got back, I went straight on leave. Came home to you and your mum. We were talking about the war. She said how amazing it was that there had been so few casualties on either side in the liberating of Kuwait. I couldn’t believe what she said. I’d seen carnage and knew of other pitched battles. The next day I went down the library and got out all the papers from the start of the war to its end. What a supreme piece of fiction. I’d met journalists out there. They told me how they were excluded from battles and assaults. No photographs. No reporting. I thought it was just the occasional time. But was most of the time. Dick Cheney Bush senior’s defence secretary had masterminded the whole media reporting. All to keep the folks back home sweet thinking it was all just a slap on the wrist for poor old Saddam. I’d met this old press hand. He was just passing through to get to the American battalions. He’d seen just about everything in the theatre of war. He’d covered most of Vietnam. He said he arrived at the scene for the launch of Desert Storm’s ground war. The pool of journalists was held back so that they could not witness the battle for themselves. Mobile phones were confiscated. Interviews with soldiers interrupted as commanders made them alter their statements. If a commander suspected that a photographer had taken shots he was not supposed to, the film was forcibly removed from the camera. When the first battle was over, this guy said the journalists were allowed to inspect the battlefield. He turned to an army officer and asked where all the bodies were. The officer replied “What bodies?” 6,000 dead Iraqi soldiers had vanished. There was no smell, no blood. Just sand. I found out why in that library. There was an interview with an American colonel. He said seventy miles of trenches filled with live and dead Iraqis were bulldozed with tons of sand. There were arms and legs sticking out of them. They used ploughs mounted on tanks. They’d practised the manoeuvre for weeks. The battlefield was just sanitised to keep those good old boys and girls at home voting for Mr. Bush. His son will have done just the same, especially as the mastermind Cheney is now vice president!
[Pause]
SCOTT:
How’s Mum? [Pause] How’s she taken it?
PAUL:
She’s in a bad way, Scott. She’s taken it really bad.
SCOTT:
It wasn’t the way they said. It wasn’t the blast from the car bomb that killed me.
PAUL:
It doesn’t matter now, Scott. Everything has gone now. We’ve got nothing left. Your Mum has lost you and in many ways she’s lost me too.
SCOTT:
But you’re not listening, Dad. It wasn’t the car bomb that killed me.
[Lights fade on a freeze]
SCENE 2
[Lights come up again. Scott is standing at attention with his rifle by his side. Paul has sat on the stage beside him.]
SCOTT:
How did the funeral go?
PAUL:
It was a mess. We were both a mess.
SCOTT:
I can imagine.
PAUL:
Before we set off, I held you Mum’s hands. She gripped my fingers. We told each other that we would be fine. We would be calm and dignified. The army had taken charge of the funeral. Your coffin was in a local Funeral parlour. When we got there, there was a great Union Jack draped over the coffin, which stood on a support with wheels. There was a soldier standing guard in full dress uniform. His head was bowed. Your mother knelt down by the coffin. She took the corner of the Union Jack in one hand and said, “They’ve taken the best part of your Dad and now they’ve taken you. They can’t take anything else. I’ve nothing left to give them.” Then she stood up, nodded her head at the coffin and turned to the soldier. He was only a kid. He stared at the ground straight in front of him. Your Mum stroked his cheek very gently with her gloved hand, turned and left the Funeral Parlour. I just choked. After that, we both howled our way through the whole proceedings.
SCOTT:
Poor Mum. She’s taken a real pounding over it all.
PAUL:
There’s something deeply wrong about burying your offspring. About them dying before you.
SCOTT:
The risks were there. You’d encountered them too.
PAUL:
Still, that knowledge was no protection. Your death crushed us when we needed it least. For me, a soldier who’d seen fierce action, to survive my soldier son was so depressing.
SCOTT:
There are different degrees of death, Dad. You died out there, or at least some parts of you died.
PAUL:
Ay. Perhaps the best parts of me.
SCOTT:
Seemed like that when you came home. You were fine at first; then slowly we realised that a different man had returned from the one we said goodbye to. The humour had gone. Replaced by a vacancy. A feeling that you were living inside your own head.
PAUL:
I felt the same as I did when I left for the Gulf. Except when the attacks came. I knew they were different.
SCOTT:
You never left the war. You just brought it back home with you.
PAUL:
Sometimes, at night, I’d suddenly find myself walking down one of the alleys near the house. I must have come out of whatever dream I was in because I’d no idea how I’d got out there or why.
[Pause]
SCOTT:
Was it a good turn out, my funeral?
PAUL:
Massive. I think everyone we knew came. Plus the usual crowd. Your Commanding Officer, your sergeant, the chaplain.
SCOTT:
[Scoffing] Accompanied by the customary platitudes.
PAUL:
Oh yes. If you listened to them, you were the greatest soldier the army has ever reared.
SCOTT:
And the chaplain assuring you that it was all part of God’s great plan.
PAUL:
Depending on which bits of the Bible you decided to heed and which to ignore.
SCOTT:
Chaplains don’t seem too keen on the sixth commandment. They are sure that god’s on their side though.
PAUL:
Always the same. Depends which god, which side. I’ve no time for any of it.
SCOTT:
Nor me. Smacks of hypocrisy. All of it.
PAUL:
Your Mum had great difficulty with the pomp and ceremony. It was a combination of feeling you had been let down by those who were supposed to be looking after you and the battles she had fought with the army hierarchy over my illness and the benefits she felt we should have received.
SCOTT:
She needs you now. The real you. The one who left for the Gulf, not the one who came back.
PAUL:
I intend to be there for her. I’ve learnt how to cope with the illness now. It was a long haul but I found a doctor who understood me and he’s helped me so much.
SCOTT:
And the flashbacks?
PAUL:
Not had one for months. No guarantees of course. Can’t actually say they’ve gone away. Doctor says most of it will never go away. It’s all about dealing with it. And I am. I think.
SCOTT:
I’m really pleased. You were a great Dad. I just missed the real you when you came back.
PAUL:
Sometimes I feel as if I’ve not come back. That I’m still there. Patrolling, on guard, listening, waiting. Expecting every moment an explosion or burst of machine gun fire. There are two of me. One, a family man with a job, household duties, a fine wife who I love and who adores me. But there’s a second me. Stressed, on edge, drinking too much to deaden the fears. I find myself walking or driving as if I was on patrol. Conscious of a constant threat. All of this in an alien and bleak landscape, sharply bright, like an empty cell in a mental hospital only much larger. When I am the second me, I can never find the way out of the box.
SCOTT:
At least for you there is an outside to the box. Another life. I’m a transient passing through this nowhere into boundless and everlasting nothing.
PAUL:
And what of God? An after life? The dwelling place of the soul?
SCOTT:
An invention of the Church to keep you up to the mark. To give you something to be afraid of so that you toe the line in exchange for a promise of everlasting life. An ideal to aim for which is designed to make this bloody awful mess of a life seem worth living.
[Lights fade]
SCENE 3
[Scott is sat on the stage, He has one boot in his hand and one by his side. He has a cleaning kit and is polishing his boots which he does on and off throughout the scene. paul walks agitatedly around the stage.]
PAUL:
Over there, no one talked about illness afterwards. Nobody mentioned PTSD, GWS. They were just letters that meant nothing to us. We didn’t even know that we were using depleted uranium in some of the shells or what was in the cocktails of drugs they gave us to combat biological warfare. Someone told you to take them so you did.
SCOTT:
And didn’t they make you feel great? All I could think of was if I feel this bad on these drugs, how would I feel if I ever encountered what they were supposed to protect us from.
PAUL:
Our problem was, we’d been brainwashed. We hadn’t read our history. War was heroic. I’d always been interested in the two world wars. How come I still believed that our generals knew what they were doing after the experiences of World War I?
SCOTT:
They called it shell shock. We’ve got so many names for it now no one knows what to think.
PAUL:
But in World War I you were shot at dawn if you walked away from the battle lines because of shell shock. It’s only now the MOD has begun to apologise for what was done to the soldiers who were ill.
SCOTT:
I remember, Mum being furious after a meeting with the MOD. They refused to accept that there was something wrong with you that had been caused by your time in The Gulf. I told Mum she should drag some of them back here and live with you for a week. They’d soon changer their minds.
PAUL:
I wasn’t prepared for what happened to me. I’d read about this guy, I think his name was Johnson. He’d been inside for killing someone not long after he’d got out of the army. He claimed he’d had a flashback. It was the first time I’d heard the word. Then, when he’d done his time, he was working on his car and being helped by his mate. He started the car up and it backfired. He killed his mate on the spot. He’d had another flashback but no one would believe him so he went to prison for a second time.
SCOTT:
First time I saw you have one, I was so scared. It came out of the blue. Mum knew what it was. I don’t know whether she was expecting it but she knew what it was.
PAUL:
We were in a supermarket weren’t we?
SCOTT:
Yeah. The three of us were just walking around. There were some maintenance men fixing a section of shelving. Suddenly three of the long metal panels fell flat with a massive crash. You grabbed Mum and me, yelled “Down. Down. Get down!” You forced us to the ground and lay half over us. I remember your eyes, they were wild. Security guards were running towards you. Mum was yelling “Leave him! Leave him! He’s got PTSD. Leave him! They stopped in their tracks. Mum got up. It seemed like the whole store was gathered watching as this weird family slowly got to its feet and looked like a normal family again. Watching you, the feeling of embarrassment vanished and this cold fear filled me from head to foot. We stopped shopping and shuffled out of the store. You trudged after us looking really confused.
[Lights fade]
SCENE 4
[Lights up. Scott is standing at ease. Paul is down stage right. He is rolling a cigarette.]
PAUL:
Were you scared out there?
SCOTT:
The peacekeeping bit wasn’t so bad. You were on edge the whole time, waiting for the unseen sniper to pick you out but the fear was inside, almost controlled. It was when you found yourself in the middle of a pitched battle. There were no boundaries. Smoke blacked out features. You had to keep your wits about you to remember where you were and which was the way back to base. It was like the first time I did map and compass work in a forest. It was so much more difficult when you couldn’t see the sky or a hill top or a feature in the distance.
PAUL:
Yes. I remember. It was like that in the desert. Featureless landscapes. Every way you looked was the same.
SCOTT:
But that was not the worst. What I wasn’t expecting was the smell. Or smells. You talked about combat a lot to me, especially once you knew I was going to enlist. You never mentioned the smells. I’ve lived among men for some time. Clean men, dirty men. Smell was part of it. But smell on the battlefield! Shit, piss, chemicals that made you gag, oil all mixed into one. I got used to the smell of the men around me back at base, but never the smell of the battlefield.
PAUL:
No. Nobody ever wants to talk abut that. The idea that a man might be so scared he shits himself is no shame on him. But so many men avoided the topic even though we all knew it happened.
[Pause]
PAUL:
How long have we been here?
SCOTT:
There is no time here. There are no clocks. No sun to chart the passage of the day. No night for rest and regeneration. The darkness used to divide one day from another. Allow a period of reflection on the day gone past and preparation for the challenge of the day to come.
PAUL:
But if no sun, where does this bright light come from?
SCOTT:
I don’t know. I no longer ask questions. There seems little point.
PAUL:
That’s another difference between us. I still ask questions. Still need answers.
SCOTT:
My presence in your head prompts me to ask questions. Like did Donna go to the funeral?
PAUL:
No son. She didn’t make it. She knew. I made sure she knew.
SCOTT:
So Jack didn’t see his Daddy’s burial? I guess that was a good thing; but I would have like him to have been near. Why didn’t she come?
PAUL:
She simply said that a line had to be drawn under her life with you and she had already drawn it. She muttered something about not upsetting Jack.
SCOTT:
I don’t want him to forget me. I’ll always be his Daddy, whoever she’s with. Has she taken up with anyone else yet?
PAUL:
Look, son …..
SCOTT:
She has, hasn’t she Dad?
PAUL:
Well, yes, there seems to be someone else in her life.
SCOTT:
So soon. It’s up to you now. You and Mum. To make sure Jack always knows who his Dad is.
PAUL:
He’ll never forget you. He won’t be allowed to. I can’t let that happen. Donna has said we can see Jack from time to time. We’ve said we’ll baby sit for her. She trusts us.
SCOTT:
Thanks Dad. I couldn’t bear him to forget me. She dumped me, by letter, you know.
PAUL:
She said she’d written.
SCOTT:
She dumped me. By letter. Said she was lonely. Couldn’t stand me being away all the time. Being frightened of the news every day. In the same letter she sent me a picture of Jack. It was taken at his third birthday party. I just sat down and cried. Not because she’d dumped me but because I’d missed my son’s birthday. The next day, the very next day I was on patrol. About two streets away there was an enormous explosion. It’s just automatic. You start running. I went round the last corner and there was the usual scene of havoc and chaos. Local people running in the opposite direction, plumes of smoke, a vehicle burning. This time it was a large van. There were bodies strewn all over the place. Between me and the burning vehicle I could see this small shape on the ground. When I got to it, it was a child. Well, all that was left of a child. And there was no head. I stood rooted to the spot. I knew I had to find that head. I looked around. Then I spotted something underneath the cover of an outside stall. I moved over to it and lifted the tarpaulin. There was this little head. No expression on its face. I don’t think the child had had time to react. It looked almost peaceful. I picked up the head. And all I could see between the tears was Jack’s face from the photograph. I cradled that head like a baby. I don’t know how long for. Then I felt this hand on my arm. It was my sergeant. He just nodded and took the head from me. No one should see things like that Dad. No one.
PAUL:
My head is full of sights and sounds I want to get rid of. They appear in dreams. They come back to me in the middle of the day. Usually just when you don’t want them to.
SCOTT:
You are never allowed to find out details either. The day after the explosion, I asked my sergeant if the parents of the child had been found and told what had happened. He looked at me with empty eyes and said “No details ever come back and we don’t go looking for them. It’s the only way to survive. Otherwise it all becomes very personal.” I understood what he was saying but I would have liked to have been the one who told them. So I knew they could find peace of mind after the trauma. If it was Jack, I’d like someone to do the same for me. [PAUSE] I stuck that photo of Jack on my locker door. Now it’s the reverse. I can’t look at the photograph without seeing that little head.
[Lights fade]
SCENE 5
[Lights up. Scott is sat on the stage, his rifle in pices around him. He is cleaning the rifle.. Paul has moved to downstage right. He explores the three walls of the stage as he did at the beginning of the first scene. At upstage right and again at upstage left he pauses and stares off stage for several moments in each case. Finally he comes back and sits down beside Scott.]
PAUL:
You’re right. There is nothing. A bland featureless landscape lit by this white searing light that seems to have no source. Where are we?
SCOTT:
No Man’s Land. Limbo. Erewhon. Wherever you were when you weren’t with us when you came back from the Gulf.
PAUL:
When I came back from the Gulf, I felt no different. Relieved that I was back in one piece but totally unprepared for what was to follow. The first inkling I had was I found myself following routines for which there was no immediate reason. One night I suddenly became aware that I was outside. My mind cleared and I realised I was on the roof of my house, standing by the chimney stack looking out over the neighbourhood. I climbed down and sat on my bed. I was shaking with terror. My shirt was dripping wet. I went downstairs and got myself a whisky.
SCOTT:
I know. I was nine. You understand quite a lot by the time your nine. But I didn’t understand you. Before you went to the gulf you were great. We’d go fishing or walking in the countryside around our home. You’d talk about birds and trees and insects. I worshipped you. You seemed to know everything. After you came back I lost all that. You always seemed ….I dunno ….distracted, as if your mind was somewhere else all the time. That night, I heard you get up. Since you’d come back I’d had trouble sleeping. It wasn’t natural for a young boy but I was worried about you. I got out of bed and put my dressing gown on and went downstairs. The patio door was wide open. I went out into the garden. At first I didn’t know where you’d gone. Then I saw you, up on the roof. You had one hand on the chimney stack, standing bolt upright on the apex of the roof. God knows what you saw. Some featureless terrain in Iraq or Kuwait. You just stood there. I didn’t know what to do. I was frightened to call you in case you overbalanced and fell. I went to get mum but as I went up the stairs I heard you come off the roof down the ladder and close the patio door. I crept back down and looked through the crack in the kitchen door. You were sat at the kitchen table, a bottle and a glass in front of you, staring into nothing. Your face was ghostly white. It really frightened me.
PAUL:
I can’t say I remember all of it, cos I don’t. Only bits. My mind is in shreds most of the time. I live in a dark tunnel. It’s cold and damp. I can hear strange noises but cannot identify them. Do you remember our trip to Big Pit?
SCOTT:
Never forget it. I’d never seen a man cry. You were the strongest man I knew. We’d gone down in the lift shaft with our helmets, lights and battery. The guides were all ex-miners. It was great. They showed us the coal seams and the stalls where the miners worked. Then we went into the stables where the half-blind pit ponies lived. I remember feeling sorry for them. The guide told us to switch our lights off so we could see just what real darkness was like. They were telling us about the children who operated the various door in the tunnels and how they would be given a lit candle and how it would blow out the first time they opened the doors to let the trucks through and that they would sit there in the cold and dark for the next ten hours. Suddenly, I heard this sobbing. It got louder and louder. The guide stopped talking and told us to switch our lights back on. All I could see was you, crouched down on your haunches with tears flooding down your cheeks.
PAUL:
I was in my dark tunnel. That’s exactly what it was like. I related to those little children because I was there like them. Lost, alone and frightened. Only I was a grown man.
SCOTT:
When one of the men tried to help you up, you screamed and cowered away, looking really scared. You ended up kicking and screaming on the ground. You were shouting “They’re dead, they’re dead” in this thick voice from the back of your throat.
PAUL:
I don’t remember details. I don’t know where I was at that moment. It was just triggered by memories. Explosions, yelling, faces of dead comrades, tank and truck sounds, the smell of smoke. And the other smells. Body smells. Smells of men scared shitless. Men trying to put a brave face on it. Trying to hide the fear that you could see etched on the blackened faces. It’s all still there, Scott. The MOD denied there was such a thing as PTSD. They didn’t want to pay out the compensation. I think slowly they’re beginning to change their minds.
SCOTT:
It was a weird experience in that cold empty place with frightened faces all around partially lit by the lamps on each other’s helmets. All the faces were distorted by the strange angles of the light. Like when you played ghosts as a kid with a torch that you would shine upwards on your face to make it look really strange.
We got you back up on the surface. The guide was really worried. I had to tell him you’d been in the Gulf and suffered from PTSD. They were brilliant. They took you away from the crowds to this little room where they made tea and sat you down. Everyone else went to the café. They let you sit there until you felt OK. I was embarrassed and frightened but that day, I think I began to understand
PAUL:
In the morning I was first down. My head was fuzzy. I was making a cup of tea for Kate and myself when I noticed the bottle of Scotch I’d poured a drink from the night before. It had been three quarters full when I had the drink. It was empty. I remember hiding it guilty in the recycling box. After that my drinking simply escalated. It seemed to be the only way to deal with the shakes, the sweats, the panic attacks. I turned from a strong controlled man into a hunted and panic stricken mess. The night time was the worst. The dreams. Faces loomed up at me from the appalling incidents I had witnessed. Each time it left me sitting bolt upright in bed with sweat pouring off me. Then I began to have this recurring dream. At first it didn’t seem to threatening, but after several nights of it I began to be terrified of falling asleep.
It started three weeks after I had come back from the Gulf. I was incarcerated in a small cell. The one wall was iron bars with a door also made of iron bars. Wherever the prison was, it was hot. Beyond the bars was a vast expanse of sand stretching as far as the eye could see. I suddenly discovered that my cell door was not locked. How I knew without getting up off my bed is a mystery. It always seems to be like that in dreams, no link to reality. For several hours I lay on my bunk and stared at the landscape beyond the bars, as if something treacherous was linked to the unlocked door. Eventually, I got up from the bunk and pushed it open and stepped out. The night air was hot and a vivid myriad of stars bore down on me. In the gloom, the row of cells seemed to stretch in an endless line both left and right of my own cell. There were no guards in sight. Not being a man to let such an opportunity go, I set off across the broad swathe of sand before me. I walked for several days. There seemed no need for food or drink in that time though by the fourth day I was tired. Towards evening on that day, I saw in the haze that played across the ground on the horizon what looked like a fence. As I approached it, I realised to my horror that it was another set of iron bars that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions.
In despair, I sat on the sand at the foot of bars. I remained there all night with the stars still hanging heavy in the sky. As dawn broke, I rose and began to follow the line of the barrier. Again I trudged wearily for four days. Towards the evening of the fourth day, the line of barriers began to curve to his left. Buildings began to appear. As I neared them I was suddenly aware of a familiarity with the scene. Then I saw my cell door, still left open. I had arrived back where I started and all the time I had still been a captive. With an air of resignation, I entered my cell, shut the door and sat on my bed.
SCENE 6
[Scott is standing at attention. Paul is sat by him staring out over the audience.]
SCOTT:
I’m in a dark tunnel too, Dad. Here, where I am now. It may look light but there’s no end to it, nothing there. I don’t exist. My dark tunnel is in your head. I only exist in your head. I am a figment of your imagination. If you weren’t having this conversation with yourself in your head, I wouldn’t be around. And soon I’ll be gone. I’ll just be a memory for you. Is that very much different from your Dark Tunnel?
PAUL:
No, I suppose not. It just feels hopeless. I have a mate works with me, when I can work. I went for a pint with him not long ago. I tried to explain how I felt. I mentioned the Dark Tunnel and he laughed and said “The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of the oncoming train.” He thought it was really funny. I can’t get anyone except this one doctor to take me seriously. Except your Mam. And she has enough on her plate at the moment. I just want one person to understand.
SCOTT:
None of my mates ever wanted to talk about negative things. Just come off duty, get pissed and have a laugh. If you start thinking about things you go mad. But the things I thought about wouldn’t go away. I wanted to understand them but I couldn’t. If you went to the Chaplain he immediately thought you wanted some escape route home so he drenched you in religious gobbledegook. Your CO took a dim view of anything negative. Bad for morale. So there was no one. So you joined the rest of the blind sheep and drank and laughed and blanked it all out.
PAUL:
When you were in school, you came home one day with a book of poems. You were doing a project on the First World War. I’d never been any good at poetry. Couldn’t understand what they were on about. You had to do an essay on what you thought one poem meant. Do you remember it?
SCOTT:
Yeah, I do. Only because I’d asked you for some help and I knew you hated poetry so I didn’t expect you to give me any. The poem was by Wilfred Owen and it was called “Strange Meeting”.
PAUL:
That’s right. It was about the meeting of a British soldier and the dead German he’d bayoneted the day before. Bit like you and me now. At first I couldn’t let go of the idea that I wasn’t going to be able to understand it. Then suddenly, it all came absolutely clear. I can even remember the first few lines:
“It seems that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined”
I’ve read it several times since. That was my Dark Tunnel. He says in the poem that he is in hell. And I know exactly what he was talking about.
SCOTT:
I got brilliant marks for that poem. I couldn’t shut you up. I had to keep stopping you so I could write it all down because what you said was so brilliant.
PAUL:
I try to read more poetry now. That day was a turning point for me. I realised that you had to put yourself in the shoes of the poet to understand what they were on about. Some I can never get anywhere near but others, after that poem, I find quite easy. I’d certainly been in that poet’s shoes, not so much in the war, but certainly afterwards. Our tunnels were very similar