A Regimental Affair (27 page)

Downstairs she could hear the faint murmur of her parents’ voices. Why didn’t her mum shout at her dad? She ought to give him a piece of her mind.
She ought to throw him out
, thought Megan.
That would serve the bastard right. See how he liked it if his life turned to rat shit
. She didn’t stop to think that his life already had. She could only see things from her perspective.

She picked up her mobile and pressed buttons until the number of her friend Zoë appeared. She pressed ‘call’ and hoped Zoë had hers switched on. She really needed to talk to someone. After half a dozen rings her friend picked up.

‘Zo? Can you talk? Something dreadful has happened.’

In the mess, Ginny was lying on her bed, her room in chaos. On the floor were a couple of half-filled cases, clothes spilling out, hangers strewn over the carpet, personal effects littering surfaces, but Ginny was oblivious to it. She was staring at the ceiling, anger churning through her body as she thought about Taz’s betrayal.
What sort of person could do that
? she wondered. How selfish did you have to be to sell stories about people who thought they were friends? Very, was the obvious answer. It just beggared belief that anyone could be so … so what? Ginny didn’t know whether Taz had been motivated by greed, ambition, jealousy or just plain old-fashioned nastiness. And it was unlikely she would be able to find out. After she had left Richard and Debbie’s, she had gone straight round to Taz’s cottage, but it had been deserted.

She leant on the doorbell just in case Taz was inside but, despite pressing the button until her thumb was sore, there was no response. ‘Scuttled back down the drains,’ muttered Ginny. She felt like hurling a stone through the window but it wouldn’t help her case to be charged with criminal damage on top of everything else. Unable to vent her spleen she had stormed back to the mess and begun to throw her kit into cases, until she realised that she should phone her sister to warn her of her impending arrival. However, Netta’s phone had been engaged. ‘Bugger,’ she swore. She lay on her bed to give it a few minutes before she tried again and found that her anger at Taz took over her thoughts.

Ginny made an effort to calm down before she tried to call again. Netta didn’t need her yelling and screaming down the phone about some woman in the village. She breathed deeply and slowly a few times and then pressed the redial button. The phone rang. Ginny was surprised at how puffed Netta sounded.

‘Have you been running?’

‘What?’

‘You’re panting.’

‘I’m doing my breathing. The baby’s coming. I thought you were the midwife.’

‘Oh. Where’s Petroc?’

‘Getting the car out. Is this call important, Ginny? Only I need to get to the hospital.’

‘No. Well, it is a bit. Can I come and stay, tomorrow?’

There was a gasp from Netta followed by some frantic puffing. ‘Hell’s bells, Gin, you pick your moments. Yeah, whatever. You’ll have to fend for yourself. Look, Petroc’s outside with the car. I’ve got to go.’

The line went dead. Ginny said, ‘Good luck, Netta,’ to the ether.

Ginny switched off her phone and put it on her bedside table.
Good luck to you and me both
, she thought. Then she turned her attention to her packing. An hour later she put two bags in her car and slipped out of the barracks. She felt like a rat leaving the proverbially doomed vessel but she knew it was the right thing to do. As she passed under the raised barrier by the guardroom, she was aware of two men in raincoats standing on the comer of the road. She risked a glance in their direction. One appeared to have a camera, but Ginny was lucky with the traffic and had pulled away before he was able to get a shot.

The sharks are circling
, she thought, and she felt a surge of pity for Bob and Alice. She was able to escape but he would be stuck there until things got sorted out.

‘I should go and see if Alice needs any help,’ said Sarah, after Alisdair had broken the news to her on Sunday morning.

‘Is that wise?’ asked her husband.

‘Why not?’

‘You don’t think she might think that you’re …’ he paused. ‘That you’re gloating? I mean you’ve never been that fond of her and you haven’t always disguised it. And let’s face it, as I am more than likely going to have to take over the regiment until a replacement for Colonel Bob is found, she might well feel that you want to snoop round Montgomery House; to measure it up for curtains, so to speak.’

‘Surely not?’

‘Well …’

‘But if I don’t go, she’ll think she’s being abandoned. She’ll think she’s some sort of pariah.’

‘True.’

Sarah sighed as she thought over the dilemma. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing one comes across on a regular basis.’

Thank God for that
, Sarah thought again and then came to a decision. ‘I am going to go round. I think I’ll wait till she’s on her own. You said that Bob’s got to go and see the brigadier today. When he goes, I’ll nip round. I discovered recently that she’s more vulnerable than I would have dreamed. I think she’ll need a shoulder.’

‘If that’s what you think is best. And,’ said Alisdair with raised eyebrows, ‘I’ve got to hand one thing to you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You haven’t said “I told you so”. Didn’t you tell me just before we went off to Kosovo that you thought there was something going on between Bob and Ginny?’

‘Well …’ Sarah shrugged. ‘It’s not exactly something to be proud of, is it? Anyway, I don’t think there was anything particularly “going on” just then.’

About an hour later Sarah saw the colonel’s staff car draw up outside Montgomery House and the colonel, in full number two dress, get in. She allowed a decent interval of around fifteen minutes to elapse before she walked down the road to Alice’s house. She took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. Despite rehearsing in her mind what she was going to say, she was so shattered by Alice’s appearance when she came to the door that all her prepared platitudes went out of her mind.

‘Yes?’ said Alice warily, her face puffy from crying and her hair tousled.

‘I just came … I just came to say … oh, God, Alice, I am so sorry.’

‘Come in,’ said Alice dully. She held the door open wide. Sarah crossed the threshold and glanced into the sitting room to her right. The curtains were still drawn, newspapers were strewn over the coffee table and the sofa cushions were unplumped. Sarah could never remember seeing Alice’s house in anything less than perfect order. But then she thought that if
her
world were crashing down, she wouldn’t be too fussed with tweaking and tidying either. Alice led the way into the kitchen. The sink was piled with dirty mugs and plates and there were toast crumbs over the big pine table.

‘Coffee?’ she offered tonelessly.

‘Tea, if you’ve got it, please.’

Without a word, Alice reached into a cupboard and extracted a packet of tea bags. She dumped one into a mug.

No teapot and Crown Derby
, thought Sarah.
Things must be bad
. Then she pulled herself up for even thinking such a thought. Of course things were bad. They could hardly be much worse.

‘So, you know the news.’ Alice said it as a statement of fact.

‘Yes. Alisdair told me about it a little while ago. I came to see if there was anything I could do to help you.’

Alice gave a mirthless laugh. ‘We’re beyond help, I think. Bob’s gone to see the brigadier and then we’ll know what’s in store for us.’

The kettle boiled and Alice slopped the water into a mug. Then she took a plastic container of milk out of the fridge and poured some into the mug. Finally she fished the tea bag out with a spoon and dropped it in the sink on top of the other debris.

‘How’s Megan taken the news?’ asked Sarah gently, accepting the proffered mug.

‘Not well.’ Alice poured herself a cup of coffee from a cafetière as she spoke. ‘I haven’t seen her since yesterday evening. I tried to talk to her but she’s locked the door to her bedroom.’

‘This sort of thing is always hard on the kids.’

‘It’s no picnic for the wives either,’ said Alice tightly.

‘No. I didn’t mean …’ Sarah tailed off. She didn’t know what she meant. She didn’t have a clue what Alice was going through. ‘I just want you to know that I’ll do anything I can to help you. I really mean that. If you want someone to answer the phone, to vet your calls, or go shopping for you so you don’t have to talk to or face anyone you don’t want to.’

‘The whole world, you mean.’

‘Whatever.’

‘That’s kind. At the moment I really don’t feel as if I could face anyone. And we haven’t even seen the story in the
Mercury
yet.’ Alice took a sip of her coffee. ‘I’ll be the laughing stock of the barracks.’

‘I don’t think so. I think most of the wives will be thinking it could so easily be them in your shoes. Let’s face it, every time the men go away, doesn’t it always cross our minds that they might stray?’

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘Maybe I was naïve. Maybe I had no imagination, but I never once thought that anything like this might happen. I always assumed that Bob loved me too much for that.’

‘I never felt that confident,’ said Sarah, surprised at herself for admitting such an intimate fear. But as she had, she carried on. ‘Personally, I always felt that as long as I didn’t know and he didn’t come home with some nasty disease, I would be able to live with it. It’s probably fine in theory. I expect I would look upon it differently if it happened for real.’

‘I hope you never have to put it to the test.’

Sarah nodded.

‘Put what to the test?’ asked Megan from the door.

Sarah looked round. ‘Hello. Megan,’ she said. She noticed that Megan looked as though she had been doing her share of crying too. ‘Nothing really. Your mum and I were just talking about trusting people.’

‘Huh,’ snorted Megan. ‘I’m never going to trust anyone again. Look where it gets you.’ She stared at her mother and Sarah angrily, as if she was daring them to contradict her.

‘You may feel differently one day,’ said Sarah gently.

Megan just shot her a killer look. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she said.

‘He’s gone to see the brigade commander,’ said Alice.

‘To get sacked?’

‘I don’t think it should come to that. I told him to deny everything. There’s no point in him admitting to anyone that the story is true. I doubt if there’s any evidence – unless someone saw them at it, and from what your father has said I don’t think they did.’

‘Oh.’ It was obvious that Megan wasn’t sure if she should be pleased at this.

‘If your father has to leave the army, we lose this house, his pay, we probably won’t be able to afford to keep you at your school – it’ll be a nightmare. We’d all be punished for what he did.’

‘I see.’ Megan looked even more subdued.

Alice pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘Would you like some toast?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘I know how you feel,’ said Alice, ‘but you must eat.’

‘I said I’m not hungry.’

Alice ignored her and put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster anyway.

‘I’ll be getting along,’ said Sarah. She sensed that Megan and Alice probably needed to be on their own. ‘If you want to talk, you know where I am,’ she added as she gathered up her handbag. ‘And just tell me if you want anything from the supermarket or anything.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You stay here with Megan. I’ll see myself out.’

‘Sarah,’ said Alice diffidently. ‘I really appreciate you coming round. I was afraid I’d have to cope with this on my own.’

Impulsively, Sarah leaned forward and put her arms around Alice. ‘It’s what we do best, us army wives – stick together.’

Alice nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Ginny had driven through the night, apart from a stop for a couple of hours at a motorway service station where she had dozed in the car. It had been a miserable journey. The weather had been diabolical. Mostly it had just rained, but as she neared Dartmoor the temperature dropped and at first the rain had turned to sleet and then it had begun to snow. After a few miles the flakes had swirled thicker and larger, dashing themselves on her windscreen like some sort of frozen suicidal insects. Ginny found herself mesmerised by the wet flakes and had to concentrate to keep her eyes on the road ahead and not be drawn into watching the dancing flurries in the beam of her headlights. The blizzard continued until Ginny was only a few miles short of Plymouth. She began to get worried. Snow was building up at the edges of the road and on the central reservation of the dual carriageway and she could see dirty-coloured ridges and ruts of muddy slush running parallel to the rapidly disappearing white lines. If it carried on like this she might not be able to get through to Penzance. And then, as suddenly as the rain had turned to snow, it turned back into rain again and the road reverted to slick, black tarmac.

Outside Plymouth, Ginny stopped for a late breakfast at a roadside truck stop. Despite the fact that it was Sunday morning, the car park was already full of enormous pantechnicons from any number of different countries. Ginny squeezed her little car between two monstrosities and looked at the wheel hubs level with her as she sat in her vehicle. She hoped that the driver noticed the car when he pulled away again. She didn’t fancy coming out of the café and finding a flattened pile of metal where her trusty Renault had been.

Ginny locked the driver’s door and made her way across the puddled car park and into the steamy truck stop. She was assaulted by the smell of cigarette smoke, hot fat, bacon and coffee. After such a long journey, she didn’t think she could have come across anything more delectable. She made her way across to the counter, very aware that she was the only woman in the place apart from the large aproned lady presiding behind the spotless counter. The place was packed with, what seemed to Ginny on first impression, solidly-built, middle-aged men in check shirts and jeans, although one or two wore the livery of larger haulage companies. For their part, the truckers gave her a cursory appraising glance and then ignored her.

Ginny cast her eye over the menu on a blackboard by the door into the kitchen. Full fry and a pint of tea for under a fiver –
that has to be the best value ever
, she thought. She ordered it and took and paid for a newspaper and then settled herself at a table to wait for her meal. She had been aware of a faint stir of interest in her when she had made her entrance into a predominantly male domain, but she had quickly regained her anonymity. But would that be the state of affairs after the story ran in Monday’s press?