The soles of my boots are plated with steel and my footsteps clatter in the night air. I wore them often on a parade ground where noise mattered, my buddies and I falling into step, rehearsing complex manoeuvres until our legs, arms and eyes were in perfect sync. The boots are solid and hard, and when they were first issued (to one Recruit Akram Khan), several of my toenails bruised so badly during route marches that they fell off. Each night I polished the boots to a mirror shine then stuffed them with newspaper soaked in leather-softening tea and urine, and like a trophy I put them in a closet bearing my rank, name and number. Working them to a shine was competitive, an act akin to pleasing God, and deprived a recruit of sleep. A mixture of spit and boot polish dried to a crust and then, with a clean cloth, rubbed in small circles until the new layer reflected resplendent. To a soldier, looking after kit is a precious and satisfying act akin to worship, and these particular boots that I first trained in I later kept aside for special occasions. They shine again as they catch thin yellow windows of light.
I turn into Coopers Street. Ahead, perhaps fifty yards, is the figure of a female. Narrowing my eyes, I make out a shortish woman in a red miniskirt and a cropped denim jacket. The volume of her wispy hair catches the light. She walks slowly, her legs balancing on what look like pins, her arms swimming for balance. I slow, adjusting my pace to hers. It would be indecent to catch her up, and I might frighten her. But at the same time I know immediately and without question that, like a chaperone and from a safe distance, I will follow her.
It is three in the morning and at eleven I must be at the war memorial two point five miles from the house I left minutes earlier. Two and a half miles, even with my bad leg, even with a small detour to pick up ordnance, will take no more than an hour.
The woman stops below a pub sign. Crouching down, she rubs the back of her ankles, muttering something I cannot make out. I catch up a little and get a clearer view. The miniskirt exposes thick white thigh flesh and her low-cut top squeezes folds of skin at her waist. On her feet are stiletto heels. She stands, struggling in her seemingly drunken state to stay upright, and carries on up the street.
I can smell her perfume as I reach the pub sign. It is a pub I know. I know everything here. Every bend, every shopfront, every wall and the quality of the brickwork, and I have seen it age, but that is not a comfort. Maley’s dad would drink in this pub, drinking being a preoccupation of all grown white men akin to reading the daily paper. They were men who measured time by when and with whom they last drank, and distances by how far someplace was from the nearest pub. Now the pub is derelict, shuttered with a zigzagging pattern of plywood planks, although its sign is still intact: The Gate Hangs Well. Azra does not wear western perfume; she wears an oud purchased in tiny vials, purportedly from the city of Mecca. This female wears an English perfume blended with alcohol, rose-tinted and volatile, an alluring, ruinous scent.
She stops again and I do too. Flattening myself against a wall, I watch her intently. I feel my heart thump inside the confines of my chest, a strange thing, as though once again I am watching the enemy. This time she slips off her stilettos and places them to one side. Squatting, she squeezes each ankle in turn. She is caught under the yellow orb of a street lamp, her only concern the discomfort of her feet. She seems cast free but dangerously alone and trusting, and unlike the fox she appears to be blind to risk. Only English women go out at night — it is a common refrain among us brothers. I first heard it as a child, a saying that is passed down the generations.
The female stands up, lifts her chin and carries on along the pavement, forgetting the shoes. After fifty short strides I halt and stare at them, abandoned as though something sinister has befallen their owner. Ahead and unburdened, she is walking faster and gaining distance. I wait for her to disappear around a bend in the road. Then I pick up a shoe and stare at it, turning it over in my hand. Tentatively I raise it to my nostrils, smelling her sweat and traces of iron where her ankles had bled. I have a nose for blood. And then, as though I crave ruin, I inhale deeply. The action seems involuntary and surprises me. I thrust my nose into the triangular enclosed part where her toes were. The inner sole feels warm, the satin finish of the shoe gratifying to the touch. Its heel ends with a sharp point. The toe is blunt but perfectly smooth as it sweeps a pleasing curve.
‘You a perv or something?’ The female puts a hand on her hip and leans back a little to look up at me. She is even smaller close up, her eyes just level with the sergeant’s emblem on my arm. I haven’t known many girls, and I search her up and down, looking for some flaw that will diminish her to a level I feel more comfortable with. Her hair parts in curled waves from a perfectly straight midline. Her face, not beautiful, is more naive than pleasant, with blunted smooth contours, blue paint smudged under her eyes and red gloss on her lips. She has a brief nose and small circular eyes.
‘Could I have my shoes back, please?’ Her thin lower lip, held tight, still trembles. I look down at her feet where two cracks in the pavement run parallel.
‘You shouldn’t be out this late on your own. It’s not safe.’
‘Fucking minicab driver tried it on. Had to get out.’ She takes in my attire, her face expressing surprise. ‘Grandma always said I’d find my knight in shining armour.’
Self-consciously, I shrug my shoulders. ‘Paki driver tried it on?’
‘Shhh,’ she says, putting a finger to her lips and looking around as though someone might be listening. ‘You can’t say things like that!’
I say in a mock Pakistani accent, ‘Most trustable minicab, madam.’
That makes her laugh. She laughs uninhibited like a drunk, the still night extending the sound. When she stops she gathers me in her eyes and with a sharp intake of breath says, ‘What’s your story?’
I shake my head.
‘A good story is as good as it gets, and I know you’ve got one.’
‘Got to crack on.’ I extend the shoes towards her but she doesn’t take them.
‘Went out with a Pakistani once. Bloody secretive bastard.’ She pauses to think, a thin parting in her smile. ‘Had a nice car.’
‘Must have been a Muslim,’ I say.
‘He was a lot of things but not much of that.’
I tut. ‘What type of car?’
‘Went back to his wife.’ She laughs again, her mouth wider and more expansive, as though I have gained her trust. Curiously, she has what appears to be a silver tooth in the front of her mouth.
‘Was that not expected?’
She shrugs her shoulders, says ‘It’s just life,’ and turns to go.
I call after her, ‘You shouldn’t be out alone like this.’
‘What you waiting for then? You walking us home or what?’
For a while we walk in silence save for the clang of my parade boots and the soft yet audible pad of her feet on the tarmac. We are no longer walking in step and I feel an urgent desire to hear the press of her feet in between that of mine, as though that almost imperceptible sound is confirmation that alongside me walks a woman. Not Azra, a figure in a burqa, but a woman with flesh and arms and legs, smeared high-gloss red lips and sweat on her brow.
As she walks she veers briefly from side to side. I feel an instinctive urge to reach over and steady her but keep my hands to myself. I compare our shadows: hers short and squat, mine upright with a peaked cap.