The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Read Online Free

starts to flick through the channels with the remote.
    Ronnie sleeps on, on his lucky moo-cow rug. Ronnie dreams on, on his lucky moo-cow rug. In the filthy cottage dotted with cat shit and reeking of cat piss and the stale and fatty phantoms of old oven-ready meals and fag smoke and unwashed material, Ronnie goes on dreaming his strange dream. In the cottage in the village, in the village that a passer-through would swear was deserted because of the pub with boarded windows like glaucoma’d eyes, because of the shoplessness, because of the chapel now someone’s second home, because of the utter lack of human activity and interaction in its narrow lanes where only small birds chirrup and insects rattle in the overgrown hedges, where nobody leaves their houses, where people die old and alone behind windows with never-drawn curtains, where people, if they ever are glimpsed, are seen as mere blurs behind the darkened windows of their Hi-Lux turretless tanks, where no children play in the gardens or streets, where no one stops to chat on their way to the shop because there is no shop to go to and where no drink and welcome wait in the pub because there is no pub to go to, in this village, this wraith of a village, on the lucky moo-cow rug, Ronnie dreams on.
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Britain’s Beast glowers at Ronnie. – Why’re you talking like that?
    â€“ Like what?
    â€“ Like some posh bastard. All fucking lah-de-dah. Think you’re an officer, do yeh? Sandhurst or something, is that it?
    Ronnie just shrugs. Doesn’t say anything.
    â€“ Well you’re not. You’re a soldier. That’s all you are. A soldier from some council estate and you’re cannon fodder like people like you have always been. You’re first to face the guns. Always are. First face the Republican Guard or the mujahideen will blow off belongs to you. Understand?
    The dream-Ronnie raises a dream-hand to touch softly his dream-face. The Beast leans to one side and spits.
    â€“ Anyway. See that ring that feller’s wearing?
    â€“ What feller?
    â€“ That grinning gimp next to Winston. See his ring?
    Ronnie squints. Sees a chunk of metal glinting on the sober-suited man’s hand, a big ring bearing a symbol, coded shibboleth, badge of belonging.
    â€“ What about it?
    â€“ Well, it’s said that if you have one like it, then you’ll remember everything you’ve seen here tonight. In fact, juskers you’ve looked at it means that you’ll remember everything you’ve seen.
    Ronnie thinks. – So what? What the hell does that mean?
    The Beast thinks too. – Dunno, to be honest with you. Fuck all, really. Like everything. But I was told to tell you that, that’s all.
    Ronnie sees a troop approaching the stream. Quieter than the others, dressed more neatly or if not that then with a self-conscious air of dressing down; artfully-torn jeans, wardrobe by Oxfam Irony Pour L’Homme. Some of them are talking quietly to each other; others shout histrionically in a look-at-me- please way.
    â€“ Who are these?
    â€“ These are some of the people who are sending you to war. Who think that you should go. And while you’ve gone to bleed in a desert they’ll write articles about how brave you are and how necessary your sacrifice is. They’re soldiers, too; in each battle, they bring up the rear. True, that may be 6,000 miles or so behind the fighting, the bullets and the blood, but nevertheless. They also serve who only stand and wait, ey?
    Ronnie’s eyeballs hurt, dazzled as they are by the redness of that troop. Each horse, red. Each ineffectual and unemployed spear and sword, red. Colour of blood spilled but not theirs, no, never theirs, and they glance once at Ronnie and his companions then look away and set to making an encampment above the ford. In a couple of minutes Ronnie can hear them tapping away on laptops and squawking into mobile phones.
    And here comes another