War Torn (12 page)

‘Bless you! But I’ll never be able to say that. I’ll just call you Aggie. So listen, Aggie, got a few minutes to come to the café with me? I’d like to buy you a coffee and hear all about this beautiful boy of yours.’ He gestured towards the sleeping baby.

She nodded and they went up the escalator together, Darrel steering the buggy expertly up the moving stairs.

She sat down and he reappeared a few minutes later with a tray.

He put a coffee cup down in front of her. ‘And crisps in case you feel salty. And a muffin in case you feel sweet.’ She didn’t move, just rocked the buggy back and forth while he unloaded the tray. It felt good to sit still and let someone else look after her.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘tell me about your little boy.’

So she told him about Luke’s fits. The trip to the hospital yesterday had been inconclusive. She hadn’t even discussed it with Jamie yet. She was waiting for his next call, when she would try to explain what the doctor had said, even though she hadn’t
understood most of it and the link would disappear for whole sentences at a time.

‘Has he had a scan?’

‘He will have scan, doctor said.’ She had understood that much, anyway.

‘Did he say what’s causing the fits?’

‘He say it hard to know because Luke so young, we wait a few months to be know anything.’

‘Well, did he give any idea what it might be?’

Agnieszka shrugged. At this point the doctor had lost her. His language had become complicated and she had suspected he was being evasive.

‘Luke’s still a young baby, Aggie, and, let’s face it, arriving into this world can be a bit of a shock. Some children take a while to adjust.’

Agnieszka looked at him with admiration. He spoke so firmly and with such knowledge that he sounded like a doctor, he sounded the way the doctor at the hospital should have sounded. ‘I like that I understand every word you say.’

‘But your English is fantastic!’

‘No. But you very clear.’

‘Right then, here’s something to be clear about. We have to sort out this broken TV of yours or you’ll end up with a new one you don’t need.’

‘I don’t have money for new TV. I don’t know why I come here today, honest.’ She was glad she had, though. The coffee tasted good. It had a layer of thick milk on top and beneath, despite the two tiny sachets of sugar she had added, was the bitterness she loved.

‘Does it start when you switch it on?’ He was sounding like a doctor again.

‘It start but I don’t get good channel or good picture.’

‘Cable, digital or terrestrial?’

She didn’t know.

‘I can sometimes sort that kind of thing out. I’m not a professional, mind. But would you like me to have a look?’

She was so surprised that she upset her coffee. Embarrassed, she mopped it up with a series of increasingly brown, soggy napkins. Then he insisted on getting her another coffee.

While he was gone, she caught sight of a pregnant woman marching through the supermarket section of the store beyond the café. A toddler sat at the front of her trolley, feet dangling. The woman seemed to be in a hurry, not in a dream the way Agnieszka had been through most of her pregnancy.

A second later she realized that it was Jenny Henley with little Vicky. Agnieszka willed Jenny not to turn. But of course she did. She’d passed something she wanted so she stopped and swung the trolley around and there was a moment when she faced Agnieszka directly. Agnieszka’s heart sank. She hoped Jenny would just wave and keep going.

It took Jenny a moment to recognize her neighbour. Instinct told her to smile, wave and keep on shopping. She was due back at Leanne Buckle’s with the groceries in time to make lunch for everyone because all Leanne could do was cuddle the twins and twist a wet tissue around in her fingers until she had some more news of Steve.

But Jenny liked Jamie a lot and she remembered how Dave had specially asked her to look out for Agnieszka. She remembered the woman’s isolation. And when Jenny had phoned with the news about Steve, Agnieszka had almost burst into tears. She decided to push her trolley over to the Polish girl for a quick, friendly hello.

‘I’m rushing!’ she said apologetically as she approached. ‘I wish I could sit down and have a drink with you, Agnieszka.’

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ Agnieszka said sweetly. Her smile was shy and she looked down at the ground.

‘Steve’s still stable,’ Jenny said, as though Agnieszka had asked about him. Because she ought to have asked, Jenny thought. ‘But they must have given him a lot of morphine or something because no one’s spoken to him. I know Dave hasn’t. And Leanne’s just waiting by the phone.’

‘I very, very sorry for Leanne.’ Agnieszka spoke with such sincerity that Jenny forgave her for not asking.

Agnieszka was looking at Vicky now.

‘How are you, little darling?’ she asked, her expression suddenly radiant. Vicky responded immediately to that smile. Who could fail to? Jenny thought. When Agnieszka smiled her apparent dis
satisfaction melted away and her whole face was transformed. She really was beautiful. She made Jenny, who longed to find time for the hairdresser, feel dowdy. The baby kicked her heartily and she stroked her stomach as Vicky prattled on to Agnieszka.

‘You’re welcome to drop by any time,’ Jenny told her. ‘I wish you would. I hate the first month or two after Dave goes. I get so fed up. Bring Luke over and we’ll have a cup of coffee.’

The invitation was delivered warmly but it was received with nothing more than her usual polite nod.

‘Must get moving.’ Jenny swung the trolley around. ‘It’s terrible if Leanne’s twins get hungry and they both start crying at once!’

Vicky and Agnieszka waved passionately to each other. At the place where the café melted into the superstore, Vicky said: ‘Mummy, who’s that man?’

Jenny turned in time to see a man approach Agnieszka with a cup in his hand. Jenny watched as the two exchanged smiles.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart,’ she said. Had he been lingering with Agnieszka’s coffee on the outskirts of their conversation so that Jenny didn’t see him? She felt her face reddening. She didn’t know why.

AT SENZHIRI FORWARD OPERATING BASE, NOTHING MOVED IN THE
baking afternoon heat. The contractors were out with 2 Platoon. 3 Platoon was on patrol in the nearby town. 1 Platoon was on base duties. They’d been away a month now, three weeks of it here at Senzhiri. Time and the heat had dulled their yearning for home.

Mal had finished cleaning his weapon and fallen asleep on his cot. It was night time and his mother was writing someone a letter. The kitchen smelled of her home-cooked spicy food and his father’s cigarettes. Mal was running through, on his way out as usual. His mother gave him a sweet, weary smile as he left.

He went to a club. His clothes were right, he smelled good and he felt lucky. The music throbbed inside him like his own heartbeat. He was watching a girl dancing and she was looking back at him as she moved. Her name was Emily and she was hot, hot, hot . . .

‘Move, you lazy bastard!’ a voice roared in his ear.

He opened his eyes. No hot babe. Just Sergeant Dave Henley, hands on hips, standing over him.

‘And if you’re going to get your head down, get your boots off! How many times do I have to tell you?’

Mal scrambled off his cot. The dream was over but the beat of the music thudded on inside his head.

‘Chinook’s here, you should be unloading with the others.’

Mal blinked. So that wasn’t a bass line. It was rotor blades.

He stumbled out of the tent, still half asleep. The dream refused to go away. He was partly in Afghanistan and partly inside his
dream in England. He remembered his mother’s face, her tired smile. The thud of the helicopter’s blades seemed to cut into him. They cut through to a vein and tapped directly into a homesickness he had felt on first arriving but had not known was still there.

But a Chinook meant supplies and supplies meant mail and there would certainly be a letter from his mother. That must have been what she had been writing in his dream. He’d dreamed the letter and now it would arrive. Also, he’d met a couple of girls just before deployment and both relationships had reached that red-hot stage where the girls wanted more. So they might write too. With luck, they might even have included pictures. With a lot of luck, they wouldn’t be wearing any clothes.

His step quickened as the Chinook blades slowed and men emerged from different tents and buildings around the camp.

Finn was there already.

‘Oh yes oh yes!’ he said. ‘Our new toys have arrived!’

Angus was standing over a wooden crate. Mal took the other end and Finn went with them to the Company Quartermaster.

‘So what’s in here?’ Mal asked.

‘I reckon it’s the new shotguns,’ Finn said.

The platoon had trained on Salisbury Plain with the new Benelli M4 shotguns but when they had arrived in Afghanistan they had found the first consignment was behind them.

‘If it’s the new shotguns,’ Mal said, ‘why aren’t there more of them?’

‘Because there are more coming. Or so they say.’

‘I’ve heard that one before,’ Mal said.

‘Why are you lot hanging around?’ The CQMS glared at them. ‘Not got anything better to do?’

‘Just interested to know what’s in the crate, Colour,’ Finn said.

‘Well you can fuck off because I’m not telling you.’

Angus started to argue but Finn and Mal pulled him back to the Chinook.

‘No point getting nasty with the colour boy,’ Mal said.

‘You want to get nasty, Mr Angry, you could try killing the Taliban some time,’ Finn said.

‘Kill them?’ Mal cried. ‘
Kill them
? Why would he do that when he could just stand in a fucking ditch and stare at them instead?’

Angus reddened. No one ever noticed your best moments; they just picked up on your mistakes and failures and kept throwing them back at you. And Mal was the worst. Angus thought his mate should understand and maybe even tell the others to fuck off but Mal seemed to feel Angus had let him down personally.

Nobody took much notice of the new lads on the Chinook when the bulging mail bag emerged. Dave sent them to find a cot while the letters were distributed.

Finn had learned not to expect blueys, but he hung around in the hope that someone, maybe one of his babymothers, might have written for once. He watched his mates opening their letters and, for a few minutes, he saw them all go home. They read their mail and they weren’t here in Afghanistan any more. Finn thought that, if the Taliban knew what they were doing, this was the moment they should choose to attack.

Angus had a bluey from his mother. It didn’t say much but, still, it was a letter. Angry hoped his father might remember how much the post mattered when he was far from home, but his old man seldom wrote.

Jamie had a whole stack, as usual. His entire family were enthusiastic letter-writers but he tore open Agnieszka’s envelope first. She’d sent pictures and a poem she’d read in a Polish magazine. Her English translation was almost incomprehensible but Jamie liked it all the more for that.

Sol hobbled up and found a thick envelope full of drawings from the kids.

Dave had a long bluey from Jenny. He glanced at a few lines halfway down the page before unfolding it. ‘. . . how much you think of us, if you ever get time to think about us out there, because sometimes you don’t even call once a week and I . . .’

He decided to read it later. Included was a card from Vicky which he pulled out at once: she’d dipped her toes in bright paints and treated him to a vibrant, fire-coloured footprint. He imagined Jen pressing the little foot onto the card and Vicky squealing. He tried to imagine their faces. But he couldn’t.

Mal opened his post eagerly. There was just one from his mum in her shaky writing, half capitals, half small letters. He watched while the blueys were distributed in case there was more for him.
Nothing. He sighed. He wanted a woman, one he knew or one he didn’t. This Emily woman, the elusive civilian who kept herself so hidden here at the base, she was the only hope.