Crossfire (8 page)

Grief, even the grief for a lost foot or a lost career, was easier to cope with alone.

“Please don’t patronize me,” I said.

Isabella stopped talking in mid-sentence.

“I wasn’t,” she said.

“Well, it felt like it,” I replied.

“God, you’re awkward,” she said. “I was only trying to help.”

“Well, don’t,” I said rather cruelly. “I’m fine without it.”

“OK,” she said, obviously hurt. “If that’s the way you feel, then I’ll bid you good night.”

She turned abruptly and walked away, leaving me standing alone in the rain, confused and bewildered, not knowing whether to be pleased or disappointed, angry or calm.

I felt as though I wanted to run, to run away, but I couldn’t even do that, not without a cacophony of metallic clinking.

 

 

O
n Monday morning I went to Aldershot to try to collect my car and my other belongings out of storage.

Isabella came with me.

In fact, to be totally accurate, I went with her.

She drove her VW Golf in a manner akin to a world-championship rally driver.

“Do you always drive like this?” I asked, as we almost collided with an oncoming truck during a somewhat dodgy overtaking maneuver.

“Only when I’m not being patronizing,” she said, looking at me for rather longer than I was happy with.

“Watch the road,” I said.

She ignored me.

“Please, Isabella,” I implored. “I don’t want to survive an IED only to be killed on the Bracknell bypass by a lunatic woman.”

She had phoned the house early. Too early. I had still been in bed.

“That Warren woman called for you,” my mother had said with distaste when I went down to breakfast.

“Warren woman?”

“Married to Jackson Warren.”

I’d been none the wiser.

“Who’s Jackson Warren?”

“You must know,” my mother had said. “Lives in the Hall. Family made pots of money in the colonies.” She had sounded very old-fashioned. “Married that young girl when his wife died. She must be thirty years younger than him, at least. That’s the one who called. Brazen hussy.”

The last two words had been spoken under her breath but had been clearly audible nonetheless.

“Is her name Isabella?” I’d asked.

“That’s the one.”

So she was married.

“What did she want?” I’d asked.

“I don’t know, do I? She wanted to speak to you; that’s all I know.”

My mother had never liked being in a position where she did not know everything that was going on, and this had been no exception.

“I didn’t even know that you knew that woman.” She’d said the words with a mixture of disapproval and nosiness.

I hadn’t risen to the bait.

Instead, I’d gone out of the kitchen and into the office to return the call to Isabella.

“I’m so sorry about last night,” she’d said.

“So am I.”

“Please, can we meet again today so that I can apologize in person?”

“I can’t,” I’d said. “I’m going to Aldershot.”

“Can’t I take you?” she had replied, rather too eagerly.

“It’s all right,” I’d said. “I’ll get the train from Newbury.”

“No.” She had almost screamed down the phone. “Please let me take you. It’s the least I can do after being so crass last night.”

So here we were, dodging trucks on the Bracknell bypass.

Everything I owned, other than my kit for war, had been locked away in a metal cage at an army barracks in Aldershot prior to the regiment’s move to Afghanistan. Everything, that is, except my car, which I hoped was still sitting at one end of the huge parking lot set aside for the purpose within the military camp down the road from Aldershot, at Pirbright.

“Let’s get my car first,” I said. “Then I can load it up with my stuff.”

“OK,” she said. “But are you sure you’ll be able to drive it?”

“No, I’m not at all sure,” I said. “But I’ll find out soon enough.” It was something that had been worrying me. My Jaguar was an automatic, so at least there were only two pedals to cope with, but both of them were designed to be operated by the driver’s right foot. I planned to use my false right for the accelerator, and my real left for the brake: two pedals, two feet, just like driving a Formula One racing car.

“But are you insured, you know, to drive with only one leg?”

“To be honest, I’m not really sure about that either, so I’m not asking. I had intended to cancel my insurance and to take the car off the road before I was deployed, but somehow I never found the time. It’s been taxed and insured for the past five months without anyone driving it, so they must owe me something. And I haven’t told the insurance company about being wounded.”

She drove in silence for a while.

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were married?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” she replied.

“It might.”

“What exactly might matter: the fact that I’m married, or that my husband is more than twice my age?”

“Both.”

“I’m actually amazed you didn’t know already. Everyone else seems to. Quite the scandal it was, when Jackson and I got married.”

“How long ago?” I asked.

“Seven years now,” she said. “And before you ask, no, it wasn’t for his money. I love the old bugger.”

“But the money helped?” I said with some irony.

She glanced at me. It was not a glance of approval.

“You’re just like everyone else,” she said. “Why does everyone assume that it’s all about his money?”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” she said defiantly, “it’s not. In fact, I won’t get anything when he dies. I said I didn’t want it. It all goes to his children.”

“Are any of them your children too?” I asked.

“No.” I could detect a slight disappointment in her voice. “Sadly not.”

“You tried?” I asked.

“At the beginning, but not now. It’s too late.”

“But you’re still young enough.”

“I’m all right. It’s Jackson that’s the problem.” She paused, as if wondering whether she should go on. She decided to. “Bloody prostate.”

“Cancer?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “It’s a bugger. The doctors say they’ve caught it early and that it’s controllable at his age with drugs. But there are some, shall we say, unfortunate side effects.”

She drove on in silence, swerving around a slow-moving truck just in time to avoid an oncoming car.

“Has he tried Viagra?” I asked.

“Tried it?” She laughed. “He’s swallowed them like M&M’s but still not a flicker. It’s the fault of the Zoladex—that’s one of the drugs. It seems to switch off his sex drive completely. That’s the physical side; mentally he’s as rampant as ever.”

“I can see that would be a tad frustrating,” I said.

“A tad? I’ll tell you, it’s extremely frustrating. And for both of us.” She looked at me as if in embarrassment. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Far too much information.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m really quite discreet. I’ll only tell the Sunday papers if they pay me well.”

She laughed.

“From what the Sunday papers said after our wedding, you’d believe that I only married him for the money and that sex between a twenty-three-year-old woman and a man nearing sixty was all in the imagination—his imagination, that is. What rubbish. It was the sex that attracted me to him in the first place.”

I sat in silence, just listening. What could I say?

“I was eighteen when I first met him. He was fifty-four, but he didn’t look it. He used to play golf with my dad every Sunday morning. Then one Sunday when Mum and Dad were away, he came round to make sure everything was OK. It seems Dad hadn’t told Jackson he wouldn’t be playing golf that week, at least that’s what Jackson told me at the time, but I’ve since often wondered if it was true.” She smiled. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, we ended up in bed together.” She laughed. “And the rest is history, or in the papers, at least.”

“Was Jackson married at the time?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “With two children. They’re both older than me. But his wife was already ill by then. She had breast cancer. I helped look after her for nearly three years until she died.”

“Were you sleeping with him all the time?” I asked.

She smiled again. “Of course.”

“But did you live in their house?”

“Not to start with, but I did for the last six months or so of Barbara’s life. His son and daughter treated me as their kid sister.”

“But did they know you were sleeping with their father?”

“They didn’t exactly say so,” she said, “but I think they knew. Their mother certainly did.”

“What? Jackson’s wife knew that he was sleeping with you?”

“Absolutely. We discussed it. She even gave me advice about what he liked. She used to say it took the pressure off her.”

Annoyingly, at this point we arrived at Pirbright Camp, so I heard no more juicy Warren revelations.

Isabella remained in her car while I went into the guardroom to sign in.

“Sorry, sir,” said the corporal behind the desk. “I can’t let a civilian onto the camp without suitable ID.”

“What sort of suitable ID does she need?” I asked him.

“A driver’s license or passport,” he said.

She had neither with her. I’d already asked.

“Can’t I vouch for her?” I asked.

“Not without proper authority.”

“Well, get the proper authority,” I said in my most commanding officer voice.

“I can’t, sir,” he said. “You would have to apply to the adjutant, and he’s away.”

I sighed. “So what do you expect me to do?” I asked him.

“You can go in, sir, but you’ll have to walk to get your car.”

“But it’s miles away.” The park was at the other end of the camp.

“Sorry, sir,” he said adamantly. “That’s the security rules we’ve been told. No ID, no entrance.”

I suppose it was fair. In the army one learned very early on that rules were rules. Security was security, after all.

“Can you please get me some transport, then,” I said.

“Sorry, sir,” he said again. “There’s nothing available.”

I stepped back and lifted my right trouser leg up six inches. “How am I going to walk to my car with this damn thing?” I lifted my foot up and down with its familiar metallic clink.

“Afghanistan?” the corporal asked.

I nodded. “IED. In Helmand,” I said. “Four months ago.”

“No problem, then, sir,” he said, suddenly making a decision. “Just get the lady to hand this in when she leaves.” He handed me a temporary vehicle pass. “Just don’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t.”

False legs clearly brought some small benefit after all.

Funny how rules can be so easily ignored with the application of a modicum of common sense. Security? What security?

 

 

I
found it was surprisingly easy to drive with a false foot. A few practice circuits of the parking lot and I was ready for the public highway. And I was much more confident about arriving safely at my destination with me driving with only one real leg than I had been in Isabella’s VW with her driving with two.

She insisted on following me the nine miles from Pirbright to Aldershot.

“You might need help carrying your things,” she’d said. “And you won’t get much of it into that.”

True, my Jaguar XK coupé was pretty small, but Isabella obviously had no idea how little I had acquired in the way of stuff during fifteen years in the army. I could probably have fitted it into my car twice over. But who was I to turn down the help of a pretty woman even if she was married?

We negotiated the busy Surrey and Hampshire roads without any mishaps and, surprisingly, without my Jag being overtaken by Isabella’s dark blue Golf, although I was sure she was going to on a couple of occasions before she obviously remembered she didn’t know the way.

“Is that
all
?” Isabella was amazed. “I’d take more than that on a dirty weekend to Paris.”

I was standing next to two navy blue holdalls and a four-foot-by-four-inch black heavy-duty cardboard tube. Between them they contained all my meager worldly possessions.

“I’ve moved a lot,” I said, as an explanation.

“At least you don’t have to engage Bekins to shift that lot.” She laughed. “What’s in the tube?”

“My sword.”

“What, a real sword?” She was surprised.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Every officer has a sword, but it’s for ceremonial use only these days.”

“But don’t you have any furniture?”

“No.”

“Not any?”

“No. I’ve always used the army stuff. I’ve lived in barrack blocks all my adult life. I’ve never even known the luxury of an en suite bathroom, except on holiday.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “What century is it?”

“In the army? Twenty-first for weaponry, other than the sword, of course, but still mostly in the nineteenth for home comforts. You have to understand that it’s the weapons that matter more than the accommodations. No soldier wants a cheap rifle that won’t fire when his life depends on it, or body armor that won’t stop a bullet, all because some civil-service jerk spent the available money on a flush toilet.”

“You men,” Isabella said. “Girls wouldn’t put up with it.”

“The girls don’t fight,” I said. “At least, not in the infantry. Not yet.”

“Will it happen?” she asked.

“Oh, I expect so,” I said.

“Do you mind?”

“Not really, as long as they fight as well as the men. But they will have to be strong to carry all their kit. The Israeli army scrapped their mixed infantry battalions when they suspected the men were carrying the girls’ kits in return for sex. They were also worried that the men would stop and look after a wounded female colleague rather than carry on fighting.”