War Torn (44 page)

‘We’ll have to lift him with his kit on, too fiddly to get it off here,’ said Jamie.

Mal and Jamie discussed which of them would help Angus pick up Connor. Finally they agreed that Jamie was in a better position.
Mal took Connor’s gimpy. Binman followed him back along the mine path.

Binman was aware of all the faces looking at him from the woods as he neared. Embarrassingly, inexplicably, he wanted to cry. But their eyes were drawn away from him. Now that Binns and Bilaal had cleared, Jamie and Angus were attempting to lift the heavy body of Connor and remove it with surgical precision.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Dave asked Mal as soon as he and Binman reached the edge of the field.

‘Three mines. Two on one side and the other by his left shoulder. No room to get his Bergen off, no room for a stretcher. So they’re lifting him out and—’

‘No!’ yelled Dave up the minefield. ‘Christ, no, no, no! Are you fucking crazy? Stop right now!’

Binman had just stepped into the woods when the flash of an explosion, bright enough for him to see it without turning around, lit up the world.

WHEN
THE
PHONE
RANG,
JENNY
GRABBED
IT
INSTINCTIVELY
AND
clasped it to her ear. She moved instantly from a dream to awake. She recognized the thickness of the dark in the room: it was the middle of the night. The house was still. There was only one person who would ring at her at this hour.

‘Dave? Dave!’

‘Jenny. Is Agnieszka.’

There was a pause while the name registered. Agnieszka almost never called. At any time. Let alone the middle of the night.

‘Agnieszka! Christ, what’s happened?’

She heard a sob at the end of the phone. Then Agnieszka replied. But her English had disintegrated. She spoke too loudly, with the emphasis on the wrong words, the vowel sounds muddled.

‘What, Agnieszka? What? I can’t understand you . . .’

‘Something not nice happen!’

‘But . . . what?’

‘I get text message from I don’t know who.’

‘From a stranger?’

‘Yes.’

Jenny was relieved that the problem was so trivial. Then she began to feel angry. Agnieszka had woken her up at . . . she glanced at the clock . . . 2 a.m. To tell her about some text message.

‘Well, take no notice, there are shedloads of crazy people out there, Agnieszka. They send random messages to strangers.’

‘No, no, no. This one know me.’

‘Oh. So what does it say?’

‘It say . . .’ Agnieszka started to cry. Her words were choked by tears. Jenny had to ask her to read it three times. Finally on the fourth try, she understood.

‘It say: Jamie is dead.’

Jenny was shocked into silence. Her head was filled by the sound of Agnieszka’s sobs.

‘Christ,’ she said at last. ‘You’ve no idea who sent this? Did it come from . . . how could it have come from . . . well, none of our boys at the FOB have mobiles, do they?’

Agnieszka was wailing now. Eventually Jenny understood her words.

‘It come from Jamie’s number!’

Jenny pulled her swollen body upright on the bed so she could concentrate more easily. She bent her legs and the bump banged against them.

‘Jamie’s phone? Did he leave it behind in the UK?’

‘No!’

‘But if he took it to Afghanistan he would have handed it in at Bastion. Everyone does.’

Only a high-pitched wail could escape through Agnieszka’s tears. Finally she spoke.

‘Jenny, don’t tell Dave. Please, please don’t tell Dave. Don’t tell anyone. Promise.’

She sighed into the darkness. ‘All right.’

‘Jamie give in his phone with other boys. But he have another, I give Jamie another little phone. My old one, to keep private. Sometimes he text me.’

Jenny felt her body tense.

‘So . . . Jamie’s been texting you.’

‘Listen, he not text army secrets. Just stuff for me, private words.’

Probably every wife in the camp hated the confiscation of their husband’s mobile in Afghanistan. Maybe some had argued. Probably a few had suggested taking a secret phone. But the men all knew that using a mobile in that hostile world was opening yourself and your mates up to the Taliban. And surely any wife would have thought her husband’s safety was more important than getting a few text messages? Except Agnieszka.

‘He never say what they doing or where or anything like that. Just personal things.’

So maybe I’m an idiot, Jenny thought. Maybe all the other wives had given their husbands a secret phone and maybe they all received secret, loving texts. All except the sergeant’s wife. Who barely got a call in two weeks, and then it was so rushed it was meaningless. Even though the sergeant’s wife was about to have a baby.

But Agnieszka was crying enough for both of them, with huge sobs. Jenny knew what it was like when the sobs felt bigger than you were.

She said: ‘So . . . what do you think has happened?’

‘I scared maybe Taliban take Jamie. And maybe kill him. And take mobile and use to text me.’ Her words ended on a wail of despair.

‘OK,’ said Jenny briskly. Her brain, which had not been making its usual quick connections recently, suddenly became an ordered, logical entity again, like one of Vicky’s toys where everything snaps into place.

‘Does he really carry the mobile around with him? When he leaves the FOB?’

‘I think he leave at base . . . except maybe they go on operation for a few days.’

‘Well Dave rang me a few hours ago. Which would be early morning in Afghanistan . . .’

‘He say they leave base?’

‘Well of course not, Agnieszka, he doesn’t say that kind of thing. And there’s no way Dave could have phoned and sounded normal if anything had happened to Jamie.’

But there had been a sense of bustle and urgency in the phone call which suggested they were going somewhere. Now she looked back, the call felt like something which had been slotted in because he might not have another chance to ring her again soon. She bit her lip.

‘Maybe they leave base and something terrible happen . . .’

Jenny thought hard. ‘Look, I’ll try Adi. If anything’s happened she’ll know, she always knows everything.’

‘But,’ breathed Agnieszka, ‘you not tell! About secret mobile!’

‘No. But I can’t call her for a few hours. She gets up early, I’ll ring after seven.’

‘After seven o’clock!’

Agnieszka sounded stricken.

‘Well, I can’t call her at two in the morning!’

‘But . . . Jamie!’

Jenny sighed. She imagined her own panic if she had received such a message about Dave.

‘OK, OK, I’ll phone her now.’

‘What will you say?’

‘I’m not sure yet. I’ll call you back.’

‘You don’t mention secret mobile?’

‘No, no.’

It was a while before Adi answered the phone. Her voice was clogged by sleep. For a few moments she did not understand who was calling her.

‘Oh, Jenny, Jenny, I was having such a dream. I was in Fiji . . . Honey, is it the baby? Is it coming? Do you need me?’

‘No, it’s nothing to do with the baby. Adi, I feel terrible calling you in the night . . .’

‘Listen, I know you would only call me at this time with a problem so tell Adi what it is.’

Her voice was settling down into its usual rhythms. It was losing its sleep rust.

‘There is a problem. But it’s not mine. Adi, have you heard from Sol lately?’

‘Not for a few days, darling. And I don’t think many people heard yesterday because they closed the phones for a while.’

‘Oh, God!’

The phones were shut down for a death or serious casualty. If anyone in any FOB anywhere was killed, the men couldn’t call out until relatives had been informed.

‘Something could have happened on the other side of Helmand, our boys wouldn’t even know about it.’

‘Dave rang me at about ten thirty.’

‘So they reopened the phones. Did he say why they closed them?’

‘No . . . nothing.’

‘He called you and everything’s all right?’

‘I think everything was all right then. They might have been leaving the base.’

‘Honey, I don’t understand, what’s going on with you?’

‘Agnieszka’s worried about Jamie.’

There was a silence.

‘She rang you in the night to tell you?’

‘She rang me in a terrible state. She thinks he’s dead.’

‘But why?’

Jenny wavered. She was about to lie to her friend. And it wasn’t even her own lie. It was Agnieszka’s lie. She felt resentful. Why should she keep Agnieszka’s secrets? Then she remembered why: because she had promised she would.

‘It’s some kind of special day for them, an anniversary or something, and he swore he’d phone. And he didn’t.’

‘But she can’t expect him to keep a promise like that, it’s impossible. The phones could be broken or he might be busy or outside the FOB . . .’

‘She’s so upset.’

Adi began to sound annoyed: ‘And she’s got you upset too, and for no good reason. Why isn’t she ringing the Welfare people with her worries instead of someone who’s about to have a baby? Or better still, don’t ring anyone. She should just wait.’

‘You’re right. But it’s not very nice waiting for bad news.’

‘It’s not very nice getting bad news. But she hasn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Tell her to stop worrying.’

‘OK, Adi.’

‘Listen, honey, we could all lie alone in our beds worrying all night and phoning our friends so they worry too. But we don’t let ourselves. Do we?’

Adi was right, as usual. There were a lot of things you dared not let yourself think about. And you certainly wouldn’t let your friends start thinking those things either.

‘OK. Thanks, Adi. Sorry I woke you.’

‘And don’t you worry now, not about nothing! You get rest like the doctor said.’

Jenny rang Agnieszka back. The line was engaged. Who was Agnieszka calling now? She waited and redialled. Still busy. Her
eyes closed. A huge weariness engulfed her. Maybe Agnieszka’s phone was engaged because Jamie was calling at last. Or maybe she was talking to Welfare. Or to that man. Jenny had promised Dave she would tell no one about the man she’d seen with Agnieszka. And now she had promised Agnieszka that she would tell no one, not even Dave, about the illicit mobile. Also, she had lied to Adi. Her life was beginning to feel full of secrets and they weren’t even her secrets, they were Agnieszka’s.

Agnieszka waited for Jenny to phone back. The minutes ticked past. Was Jenny still talking to Adi? Was she phoning other people? Had she fallen asleep?

Her anxiety was like a massive machine waiting to run her over. Her nerves throbbed as she listened to the silence, listened for a car stopping outside. Then the doorbell. Then the Families Officer. Standing on the doorstep with news that would crush her like a great juggernaut.

Jamie dead. Jamie not there any more. Jamie’s body in a big, dark bag and then a wooden box, buried in the cold ground. Jamie icy and unfeeling, Jamie without love or warmth or life inside him. Jamie unable to put his arms around her or hold Luke. Had all his absences been a way of preparing her for this final, awful absence? She wanted to howl with pain, howl like a wolf.