War Torn (20 page)

‘Or maybe,’ Jamie said, ‘there’s a Sainsbury’s in town and no one told us.’

Martyn smiled. ‘That’s my colleague, Professor Emily Fullerton.’

There was a pause.

‘Emily?’ Dave’s eyes narrowed. ‘Did you say Emily?’

‘
That’s
Emily!’ Jamie said.

‘
That’s Emily!
’ Mal cried.

Every face turned towards Finn, who, despite trying to look nonchalant, couldn’t stop himself grinning.

‘Oh, yeah!’ he said as though he’d just noticed her. ‘That’s Emily.’

They watched as the woman withdrew the contents of her
shopping bag. She handed a package carefully to the chef, Taregue Masud, who beamed at her.

‘She needs him to put some samples in his freezer,’ Martyn said.

Finn was chuckling.

‘Oh, man!’ Mal couldn’t hide his dismay. ‘You’re never shagging
her
on hot afternoons!’

‘You all fell for it! I had you all over! I had every single man in the platoon after that old bird!’

‘Not me,’ Jamie said.

‘Nor me,’ Dave said. ‘Or Sol.’

‘Whenever I told you I was with Emily, I was in a sangar getting my head down for an hour.’

‘You shithead!’ Mal’s expression was tragic.

‘I knew it wasn’t true,’ Jamie said.

‘Will someone tell me what I’m missing?’ Martyn asked.

Dave coughed. ‘Well, the marines started this rumour. And Finn’s been doing his best to spread it . . .’

‘They said there’s a lady in the isoboxes called Emily who’s a bit of a . . . er . . .’

‘Sex grenade,’ Finn said helpfully.

Martyn burst out laughing.

‘Well, maybe Emily is a sex grenade,’ he said. ‘Never judge a book by its cover.’

‘What’s she doing here?’ Dave asked.

Martyn rolled his eyes. ‘I’ve had her imposed on me by the company. I can smell oil at a thousand paces, but that’s not good enough for the company. They have to send an academic out to sit in an air-conditioned box all day and analyse my results and argue with me.’

Dave grinned. ‘You’re the best of mates, then.’

‘I fight with her every day.’

‘She an engineer?’

‘A geophysicist. And if she started the sex grenade stuff with me, I’d run a mile.’

Emily was issuing instructions to Masud, who was nodding vigorously. ‘Yes, madam. Yes. Yes, madam.’

‘Where’s her body armour?’ Dave asked.

Marty pulled a face. ‘She doesn’t always wear it. You can
try giving Emily orders. But even Nick Willingham’s given up.’

‘Well, Finny,’ Jamie said. ‘I just hope you don’t get lynched.’

‘I had the whole platoon hot for Emily!’ Finn still hadn’t stopped chuckling.

‘I want to cut you,’ Mal said.

‘It was just a joke,’ Finn said.

‘Angus’ll want to cut you too. So will all of 2 Section.’

‘And just wait till you get back home,’ Dave said. ‘Jenny told me half Wiltshire knows about Emily the sex grenade and some of the wives are getting really pissed off.’

Finn rubbed his hands.

They watched Emily march out of the cookhouse. And then, simultaneously, they all started to laugh.

When the others got up to go, Finn remained seated. ‘How about we play some blackjack?’ he asked Martyn in an undertone.

Dave swung around, fixing him with a meaningful stare.

‘I mean, for matchsticks or something. Not money of course.’ The oilman launched into an explanation of the game as the others left the cookhouse.

‘We might as well let them get on and fleece each other,’ Dave said wearily.

‘The Yank seems a nice enough guy,’ Jamie said.

‘Topaz fucking Zero tries to go sniffing out oil wherever he wants, whenever he wants and expects us to do the security without any consultation. The marines got fed up with him and now the OC can’t keep him under control either. He may be nice,’ Dave said, ‘but you’ll see, he’s trouble.’

THE SUN GREW STRONGER DAILY. IN WILTSHIRE THE WOMEN
changed into their summer clothes and lay in their back gardens whenever they could, soaking up the light and heat as though it was a rare commodity they had to hoard. In Afghanistan temperatures soared up to 50 degrees and men sheltered from it.

‘Is it that much hotter?’ the lads asked. ‘It’s always been hot.’

‘It’s bloody hot but you’re used to it now,’ Dave told them.

He’d watched his men grow leaner and stronger as they muscled up carrying heavy kit in blinding heat day after day. Some even seemed to grow taller. And they were more proficient. Dave had to impose fewer and fewer of his on-the-spot penalties, like shit duties or press-ups, for lapses at kit inspection.

Everyone was falling into the routine of base life and their thoughts of England were fading like old snapshots. Their feelings of longing, loss and love still welled up at unexpected moments then mysteriously subsided. Every man experienced this. No one spoke about it. The new arrivals were no longer getting a hard time just because they were new. And the casualties they had replaced, Buckle and Nelson, were seldom talked about now. Until word came through that Steve Buckle was flying back to the UK at last.

Dave phoned Leanne as soon as he heard.

‘Remember,’ he warned her, ‘they’ll have dosed him up with extra morphine for the flight so he won’t be himself.’

‘But why haven’t they let me speak to him yet?’ Leanne demanded. ‘They keep saying soon, soon.’

He was relieved at her anger. It was more like the old Leanne than the anxious, tearful woman he’d been hearing lately. He had one of those sudden and unexpected bursts of homesickness. He was remembering Leanne, plump, loud and funny, sitting in the garden with Steve one summer’s day. They’d been pretending to argue and after a few beers the argument had turned into a comedy act. No aspect of married life was too private to escape their slick one-liners. Dave hoped it wouldn’t be long before they were concocting some good jokes about prosthetic limbs.

‘Can’t he talk, Dave? I mean, has he lost the power of speech?’ Leanne asked, her voice cracking and a sob breaking through. The good jokes began to seem a long way off.

‘I’ve already told you, Leanne, he can talk but he doesn’t always make sense. Probably because of the morphine.’

‘Probably! Dave, is my Steve brain-damaged? Are they sending me back some sort of fucking vegetable?’

‘No. But he took the full force of a big blast. He has to recover from the shock.’

He tried to distract her by asking about the arrangements that had been made for her in Birmingham.

‘We’ve been given an army flat for a week. My mum’s meeting me there. She’ll take care of the boys for me and I’ll mostly go in by myself.’

Dave could tell that inside her head she had walked into Selly Oak hospital and experienced her reunion with Steve at his bedside many times. He wondered what it would be like when it finally happened.

Leanne and Jenny stood by the car in front of Leanne’s house. Everything was loaded for the trip to Birmingham. The car was so full of high chairs, travel cots, toys, a pair of sit-on scooters, packs of nappies and suitcases that there was hardly room for the driver. The two small passengers peered from their seats at the back, still and quiet as though they knew something important was happening.

Leanne seemed reluctant to drive away.

‘I’m scared,’ she said.

Jenny was learning not to be surprised by the new Leanne. If the
old Leanne knew what fear was, she never would have admitted to it.

‘What sort of scared?’ Jenny asked. ‘First date scared? Walking down a dark street and someone’s following you scared?’

Leanne drew on her cigarette. She had started smoking again. She did not want the twins to see her so she leaned out of windows or rushed into the garden or hid in the car to smoke. Now, she was leaning against the bonnet with her back to them, as though they wouldn’t notice the smoke if they couldn’t see the cigarette.

‘Horror movie scared. Like, when someone goes up the creaky stairs and opens a door and you don’t know what’s behind it? But you know it’s something awful?’

Jenny looked at Leanne’s large, unhappy face. Leanne had put on weight. Since Steve’s accident, she could not stop eating. She reported how her sleepless nights were punctuated by frequent trips downstairs to the fridge. She had always been large but the new Leanne did not joke about it or constantly announce to the world that she would be starting a new diet tomorrow.

‘Is your mum meeting you at the hospital?’

‘At the flat. If she can find it. God knows how she’ll manage to drive through Birmingham, she even gets lost in camp.’

There was almost no cigarette left but Leanne seemed to want to smoke it anyway.

‘I’d better get going.’ She did not move. ‘Before the boys start yelling.’

Jenny put her arms around Leanne. There felt like an ocean of belly between them both.

‘Wish I was big for the same reason you are,’ said Leanne.

Jenny pulled back in surprise.

‘Do you want another one? You always said the twins were more than enough!’

Tears were gleaming at the edges of Leanne’s eyes. She sniffed.

‘’Course I want one. Now I know I can’t have one.’

‘Why not?’ Jenny asked.

Leanne sniffed again. ‘How much of him got blown away, Jen? Did it stop at his leg?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘Oh, c’mon. If he’d lost his private parts they would have told you!’

‘It might all be there, but will any of it work? Now they’ve cut his nerves and blood vessels and things? And what sort of a marriage are we going to have if he can’t . . .? And even if he can, I’m not sure I’ll want to. With a bloke who’s got a stump for a leg.’

‘You’ll want to because he’s your Steve and you love him and he’s gorgeous, leg or no leg.’ Jenny’s voice was firm.

Leanne looked at her doubtfully.

‘Know what you’re doing, Leanne? You’re in the horror movie, walking up the creaky stairs and trying to imagine all the things behind the door. That’s how horror movies work. You scare yourself imagining things that aren’t even there.’

‘Yeah.’ Leanne had turned to face the car, its outsize load and the waiting twins. ‘Yeah, well by tonight I’ll know, won’t I?’

‘Ring me,’ said Jenny. ‘Just ring me and tell me. I’ll listen.’

Leanne sniffed again. She squeezed Jenny’s arm but did not look at her. Jenny knew she was trying not to cry. Leanne climbed in and slammed the door. Her face, behind the wheel, was pale and puffy.

She wound down the window.

‘I’ve waited to see him so long . . . and now I don’t want to go,’ she said, her voice turning squeaky at the end.

‘Go,’ Jenny commanded her. ‘You’ll feel better once you’re on your way.’

Vicky, who had been occupied picking daisies from a strip of lawn outside Leanne’s house, came and took her mother’s hand. The pair of them waved as the car drove slowly down the road towards the entrance of the camp.

DESPITE A SERIES OF MINOR STRIKE OPS, INTELLIGENCE AND
aerial surveillance, it was impossible to pinpoint the location of the Taliban training centre. Regular skirmishes with the enemy had not led to another contact as serious as the one that had greeted their arrival. The river crossing had been the focus of most of the fighting, and occasionally the base itself.