Crossfire (7 page)

I wandered down to the center of the village, past the Norman church that sometime in the twelfth century had replaced the earlier Saxon version. Even though I was not what was known as a “regular” churchgoer, I had been into Lambourn Church many times, mostly along with the other boys and girls from the local primary school. My memory was of somewhere cold, and that was not just because the temperature was always low. It was also due to the realization that people were actually buried beneath my feet, under the stones set in the church floor. I could recall how my overactive childhood imagination had caused me to shiver, as I did so again now.

I stopped and thought it anomalous that the bodies of those buried so long ago could still have such an effect on me, whereas the bodies of the Taliban, those I had so recently sent to their graves, seemingly had none.

I walked on.

The center of the village was mostly unchanged, although some of the shops had different names, and others had different purposes.

I went into the general store to buy a sandwich for lunch and waited for my turn at the checkout.

“Oh, hello,” said the woman behind the till, looking at me intently. “It’s Tom, isn’t it? Tom Kauri?”

I casually looked back at her. She was about my age, with long, fair hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore a loose-fitting dark gray sweatshirt that did a moderate job of camouflaging the fairly substantial body beneath.

“Tom Forsyth,” I said, correcting her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “That’s right. I remember now. But your mum is Mrs. Kauri, isn’t she?” I nodded, and she smiled. I handed her my sandwich and can of drink. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

I looked at her more closely.

“Sorry,” I said. “No.”

“I’m Virginia,” she said expectantly.

I went on looking at her, obviously with a blank expression.

“Virginia Bayley,” she went on. “Ginny.” She paused, waiting for a response. “From primary school.” Another pause. “Of course, I was Ginny Worthington then.”

Ginny Worthington, from primary school? I looked at her once more. I vaguely remembered a Ginny Worthington, but she’d definitely had black hair, and she’d been as thin as a rake.

“Dyed my hair since then.” She laughed nervously. “And put on a few pounds, you know, due to having had the kids.”

Virginia Bayley, plump and blond, née Ginny Worthington, skinny and brunette. One and the same person.

“How nice to see you again,” I said, not really meaning it.

“Staying with your mother, are you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s nice.” She scanned my sandwich and the can of drink. “Such a lovely woman, your mother. That’s three pounds twenty, please.” I gave her a five-pound note. “A real star round here.” She gave me my change. “Real proud of her, we are, winning that award.” She handed me my sandwich and drink in a plastic bag. “Lovely to see you again.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the bag. “You too.” I started to leave but turned back. “What award?”

“You must know,” she said. “The National Woman of the Year Award. Last month. In London. Presented by the Prince of Wales, on the telly.”

I looked blank. Had I really been so involved with my own life that I hadn’t even noticed my mother receiving such an accolade?

“I can’t believe you don’t know,” Ginny said.

“I’ve been away,” I replied absentmindedly.

I turned away from her again.

She spoke to my back. “You can come and buy me a drink later if you like.”

I was about to ask why on earth I would like to buy her a drink when she went on. “My old man has arranged a bit of a get-together in the Wheelwright for my birthday. There’ll be others there, too. Some from school. You’re welcome to come.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Where did you say?”

“The Wheelwright,” she repeated. “The Wheelwright Arms. At seven o’clock.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“So is it your birthday today?”

“Yeah,” she said again, grinning.

“Then happy birthday, Ginny,” I said with a flourish.

“Ta,” she said, smiling broadly. “Do come tonight if you can. It’ll be fun.”

I couldn’t, offhand, think of a less fun-filled evening than going to the pub birthday party of someone I couldn’t really remember, where there would be other people I also wouldn’t be able to remember, all of whom had nothing more in common with me than having briefly attended the same school twenty years previously.

But I supposed anything might be preferable to sitting through another excruciating dinner with my mother and stepfather.

“OK,” I said. “I will.”

“Great,” Ginny said.

So I did.

 

 

T
he evening proved to be better than I had expected, and I so nearly didn’t go.

By seven o’clock the rain was falling vertically out of the dark sky, with huge droplets splashing back from the flooded area between the house and the stables.

I looked at my black leather shoes, my only shoes, and wondered if staying at home in front of the television might be the wiser option. Perhaps I could watch the weekly motoring show and use it to bully my mother further over her car.

Well, perhaps not, but it was tempting.

I decided instead to find out if it would be possible to pull a Wellington boot over my false leg. I suppose I could always have worn only one boot while leaving the prosthesis completely bare. I don’t think the water would have done it much harm, but the sight of a man walking on such a night with one bare foot might have scared the neighbors, to say nothing of the people in the pub.

I borrowed the largest pair of Wellies I could find in the boot-room and had surprisingly little difficulty in getting both of them on. I also borrowed my mother’s long Barbour coat and my stepfather’s cap. I set off for the Wheelwright Arms relatively well protected but with the rain still running down my neck.

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” said Ginny, as I stood in the public bar removing my mother’s coat, with pools of water forming on the bleached stone floor. “Not with the weather this bad.”

“Crazy,” I agreed.

“You or me?” she said.

“Both.”

She laughed. Ginny was trying very hard to make me feel welcome. Too hard, in fact. She would have been better leaving me alone and enjoying herself with her other guests. Her husband didn’t like it either, which I took to be a good sign for their marriage. But he had no worries with me. Ginny was nice enough but not my sort.

What was my sort? I wondered.

I’d slept with plenty of girls, but they had all been casual affairs, sometimes just one-nighters. I’d never had a
real
girlfriend.

Whereas many of my fellow junior officers had enjoyed long-term relationships, even marriages, both at Sandhurst and in the regiment, I was, in truth, married only to the military.

There was no doubt that I had been, as I remained, deeply in love with the army, and I had certainly betrothed myself to
her
, “forsaking all others until death do us part.”

But it seemed it wouldn’t be death that would do us part: just the small matter of a missing foot.

“So what do you do for a living?” Ginny’s husband asked me.

“I’m between jobs,” I said unhelpfully.

“What did you do?” he persisted.

Why, I thought, didn’t I simply tell them I was in the army? Was I not proud to be a soldier? I had been before I was injured. Wasn’t I still?

“A banker,” I said. “In the city.”

“Recession got you, did it?” he said, with a slightly mocking laugh in his voice. “Your trouble was too many big bonuses.” He nodded. He knew.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

There were seven of us standing in a circle near the bar. As well as Ginny and her husband, there were two other couples. I didn’t recognize any of them, and none of the four looked old enough to have been at school with me.

One of the men stepped forwards to buy a round at the bar.

“Should I know any of these?” I said quietly to Ginny, waving a hand at the others.

“No, not these,” she said. “I think the weather has put some people off.”

I was beginning to wish it had put me off as well when the door of the pub opened and another couple came in, again dripping water into puddles on the floor.

At least I thought they were a couple until they removed their coats. Both of them were girls—more correctly, they were young women—and one of them I knew the instant she removed her hat and shook out her long blond hair.

“Hello, Isabella,” I said.

“My God,” she replied. “No one’s called me Isabella for years.” She looked closely at my face. “Bloody hell. It’s Tom Kauri.”

“Tom Forsyth,” I corrected.

“I know, I know,” she said, laughing. “I was just winding you up. As per usual.”

It was true. She had teased me mercilessly, ever since I had told her, aged about ten, that I was deeply in love with her, and I had asked her to marry me. She had clearly filled out a bit since then, and in all the right places.

“So what do people call you now?” I asked.

“Bella,” she said. “Or Issy. Only my mother calls me Isabella, and then only when I’ve displeased her.”

“And do you displease her often?” I asked flippantly.

She looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. “As often as possible.”

Wow, I thought.

 

 

B
oth Isabella and I rather ignored Ginny’s birthday celebration as we renewed our friendship and, in my case anyway, renewed my feelings of longing.

“Are you married?” I asked her almost immediately.

“Why do you want to know?” she replied.

“To know where I stand,” I said somewhat clumsily.

“And where exactly do you think you stand?” she said.

I stand on only one leg. Now, what would she say to that?

“You tell me,” I said.

But throughout the whole evening, she never did answer my question even though, in a roundabout manner, I asked her three or four times. In the end, I took her silence on the matter to be answer enough, and I wondered who was the lucky man.

At ten o’clock, as people were beginning to drift away, I asked her if I could walk her home.

“How do you know I walked?” she asked.

“When you arrived you were too wet to have simply come in from the parking lot.”

“Clever clogs!” She smiled. “OK. But just a walk home. No bonus.”

“I’ve never heard it called a bonus before.” I laughed. “No wonder all those bankers are so keen to keep their bonuses.”

She also laughed, and we left the pub in congenial companionship but with her hands firmly planted in her coat pockets so there was no chance of me being able to casually take one of them in mine.

Part of me longed to be with a woman again, just for the sex.

It had been a long time. It was six months or more since I had talked a girl into my bed with stories of heroic encounters with a mysterious enemy, stories of men being men, sweating testosterone through every pore, and satisfying ten maidens each before breakfast. I was good at the game, but recent opportunities had been limited, almost nonexistent.

Six months was a long time, with only the occasional misplaced sponge by a blushing nurse to fulfill the need.

I positively ached to have a “bonus” with Isabella, even here, in the street, in the still pouring rain.

But there was little likelihood of that, and my chances weren’t exactly helped when she suddenly stopped.

“What’s that noise?” she asked.

“What noise?” I said, stopping next to her and dreading the moment.

“That clicking noise?” She listened. “That’s funny. It’s stopped now.”

She walked on and I followed.

“There it is,” she shouted triumphantly. “It’s you, when you walk.”

“It’s nothing,” I said quietly. “Just the boots.”

I could see she was confused. I was wearing rubber boots. They would make no noise, certainly not a clicking noise.

“No, come on,” she said. “That’s definitely a sharp metal sound, and you’ve got Wellies on. So what is it?”

“Leave it,” I said sharply, embarrassed and angry. In truth, more angry with myself for not saying than with her for asking.

But she wouldn’t leave it.

“Come on,” she said again, laughing. “What have you got down there? It’s a toy, isn’t it? Part of your chat-up technique?” She danced away from me, looking down, searching for the source of the noise and laughing all the while.

I had no choice.

“I’ve got a false leg,” I said quietly.

“What?” She hadn’t really heard and was still dancing around, laughing.

“A false leg,” I said more loudly. She stopped dancing.

“I’ve only got one leg.”

She stood still, looking at me.

“Oh, Tom, I’m sorry.” I thought for a moment that she was crying, but it might have been the rain on her face. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

But it wasn’t.

Isabella stood in the street, getting wetter, if that was possible, while I told her everything I could remember about being blown apart by an IED and my subsequent medical history.

She listened, first with horror and then with concern.

She tried to comfort me, and I despised it. I didn’t want her pity.

Suddenly I knew why I had come back to Lambourn, to my “home.” I must have subconsciously understood that my mother would not have given me the lovey-dovey consoling parental hugs I would have hated. She would not have tried to be reassuring and sympathetic. And she would not have tried to commiserate with me for my loss. I preferred the Kauri “Get on with your own life and let me get on with mine” attitude.