“Half the kids here don’t go to school at all.”
“Now that the war seems to be over, you will be able to put your money into schools instead of weapons?”
“Perhaps. But we don’t have enough teachers anyway. It’s going to take a long time.”
Jack had to acknowledge to himself that he had always felt deprived, but he would always be grateful he was born in Britain after this.
“I had to leave at the end of primary school,” continued the young soldier, “not enough money.”
“But don’t you feel deprived?”
“Mostly not. I’ve done alright for the past year in the army.”
Just then they were joined by three rather daringly dressed young women, no older than Jack. They approached the officer and one walked straight up to him and put her arm around his neck. “Who’s your handsome friend?” she asked, looking at Jack.
“A reporter from some foreign land where they all go to school rather than war,” he replied.
Before he knew what was happening to him, one of the others had her arm around Jack and squeezed herself against him. “You’re nice!” she declared. Jack had been full of authority in the barracks. He now felt completely overwhelmed. Girls had always thought of him as being rather dull in Persham. Here these perfect strangers were making it quite clear they were very interested in him.
Jack struggled to his feet. “I think I have to be getting back now,” he said to the soldier. “I have a lot of writing to do!”
The young officer sighed. “Sorry ladies,” he said, giving the first girl a kiss on the cheek. “Next time perhaps, Loops.” The girls looked quite upset.
“Won’t you tell us about your foreign land?” one asked. “We can have a lot of fun. Don’t you have fun in your country? It must be a very dull place. The girls there must be totally bored!”
“It’s just… that I have work to do!” blurted Jack, amazed at how he could lie when he didn’t really need to. But somehow he just felt he didn’t want to offend them. He was frightened. He just wanted to run. As they left the bar, Jack was very relieved to leave both this pack of pawing girls and his untouched beer!
“They’re OK, they’re clean,” stated the soldier. And then, “I bet you’ve never had a girl, have you?”
“No, not like that.”
“You should. They don’t ask for much. And the money you give them makes them happy and helps them buy more clothes and eat regularly.”
“But that’s selling sex!”
“Yes, of course. But what’s wrong with that if they want to sell, and men want to buy? Nobody’s forcing them.”
“But they wouldn’t want to do that if they could make money otherwise,” suggested Jack. He knew Jalli or his mum would rather starve than do that. He shuddered at the thought. He wouldn’t want that – it had to hurt a person to sell sex.
“Maybe not. But who knows. That’s the way many girls live around here. It’s part of life. Many of them are grateful that they can earn good money whilst ‘having fun’.”
“But there’s no future in it,” said Jack.
“Who knows what the future holds. We all live for today here. That’s what war does to you.”
Jack saw acutely the stark difference between sex for its own sake, and sex in a committed loving relationship that presumed a future. These young people had never known anything like the wonder he had experienced in that first kiss with Jalli. Oh, how he missed her! He wondered how long it would take to find these boys. He hoped not very long… but he was determined to see it through.
That night he thought about those street children who never had mothers or fathers, and the girls of his age selling themselves for a night of “fun”. He had always taken Matilda for granted. She wasn’t a happy woman, and there had not been much laughter in their house, but she loved him and had always been there for him. He began wondering where his father was. As a child, he had often imagined him living somewhere, but he had never thought it possible to try and find him. After all these adventures, he might have enough courage to look for him. He shivered. But this place was not as daunting as he would have thought had he been told all that he was going to do in advance. When you’re actually doing it, he reflected, it is not as bad as it might seem when just thinking about something. How many things had he never done because he was too scared to start? Loads. Perhaps if God (if that was the right name to use) wanted him to look for his father it might all work out. Of course, he had grown up hating him, but mostly for not being there. And what was all that about the smell of beer? Could he have been a drunk?
That had never occurred to Jack before. He made up his mind that when he got back he would start looking. Perhaps Jalli would come with him. That would be nice. And it was with the sweet thought of Jalli that Jack drifted off to sleep.
*
Two days later, Jack was called to the commanding officer’s office.
“We have your two boys,” he declared.
“They’re both in one piece?” asked Jack.
“Fine as can be.”
“When can I take them back home?”
“Tomorrow morning. But I will need their father to sign for them. My lieutenant will accompany you to the croft and supervise the handing over. The letter will declare that they volunteered to serve and lied about their age. And I want a copy of the report you will be making to your editor.”
“Of course. I will bring it to your office before the end of the day.” Jack had been anticipating this and felt they would be pleased with his efforts. He wrote about the helpful way he had been treated. He simply left out anything that he knew would not please them. He entitled the report, “Speedy Efforts to Bring Compassion into War-torn Land”. A bit long winded, he thought, but he wasn’t writing it for a magazine readership, but to facilitate the return of the boys.
The following morning he was introduced to two confused-looking young men who were not quite sure what was going to happen to them. They were not aware of anyone else being sent home from their regiment. They were simply summoned to the HQ and told that they were going home with a foreign journalist who wanted a story. They were told, under threat of arrest and other dire consequences, that they were to say nothing of their time in “the service”. In particular, they were to tell the foreigner that they were volunteers who had lied about their ages, as their papers said. Of course they merely accepted that they should do all that they were ordered to. But were they really going home? Jack was not like anyone they had ever met before. But he seemed to really want to help and genuinely appeared to know about their home.
They were all to travel in an army vehicle with a driver and the young officer who had been assigned to Jack. They left the barracks and drove through the town. In the main street with the bar the lieutenant ordered the driver to stop. Waiting for them was the young girl, Loops, who had approached the soldier in the bar three nights earlier. She was not dressed up but looked attractively ordinary, thought Jack. To his surprise she climbed into the back, her belongings lifted in after her. “I’m taking her home,” declared the officer from the cab. “She would rather go back to school than have a whole week of nights of fun with me! Keep off the drink,” he warned Jack, “you might promise things you later regret!”
It transpired that after he had had a few the soldier had asked her what she really wanted and promised that, if he could afford it, she should have it. He was thinking of clothes or bling. Instead she had asked for a recommendation and reference to rejoin school from the commanding officer in the garrison. With such a document she would get priority back in her village. It would also guarantee her reputation at home. She was ambitious, he explained, she had also wanted her school fees for a year, and money for a uniform! But somehow it made him feel good to give her the things she needed to get back to school. He had left her feeling happy and for some reason he now felt more fulfilled than any “night of fun” had done. He had bribed the commanding officer’s secretary to produ
ce a standard copy of the recommendation in her name. She had simply put it with the others and the CO had signed it. He was pleased to see her there waiting – it had occurred to him that she might have been too drunk to know what she was saying and, today, might have forgotten – or think better of it.
“Thought you might have changed your mind,” he said as she got in.
“No chance!” she declared. “I thought you might.” The lieutenant feigned disbelief. “Got the letter?” He handed her the official letter in an imposing looking envelope. “Thanks.”
Jack spent the journey listening to her story. She had been tempted by what seemed a short-cut, an easy way to combat the grind that she had witnessed among her family. In fact she still only half regretted it. Was she not better off than her sisters who had stayed at home labouring? She had told them she had been working for the army. Now she wanted education – she had seen the difference it made. So long as people didn’t think ill of her, she reckoned she had done about the right thing. Jack asked whether she loved the young soldier.
“Of course not!” she exclaimed. “But he has been kind to me. He has not treated me badly like some of them!”
Jack wished her well. Education had worked for him – and Jalli, he explained, but he had always taken it for granted. (In some ways, he reflected, in Britain he hadn’t been living in the real world but a kind of cocoon that shielded him from reality. The white gate into this place had helped him see that.)
“Jalli? Is she your sister?”
“My girlfriend.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s the nicest person you could ever hope to meet.”
“Clever?”
“Yes. She’s good at biology.”
“Bi – what?”
“Biology. Animals and plants. She especially likes insects.”
“That’s weird!”
“She finds them really interesting.”
“She teaches you things?”
“All the time. Not just about insects and school things either. She’s got good ideas. And she can just talk to God like he’s there beside her all the time.”
“That sounds creepy.”
“No. It isn’t. It could be, I suppose, but not how she does it, kind of naturally. Like she talks to anyone. God is a sort of friend to her.”
“So does God look after her?”
“She says that knowing God is with you doesn’t stop things happening to you, but He helps you through. Apart from her and her grandmother, when she was only three, all her family were drowned when a dam burst.”
“And she still talks to God!”
“Well, He didn’t exactly make the dam burst.”
“If God were God he could have stopped it.”
“Jalli says that that is not the way God works. He doesn’t always intervene to stop bad things happening, but He helps people when things happen to them. And Jalli believes in heaven of course.”
“Heaven!”
“Yes, the place you go to when you die.”
“I know what heaven is. Some of the older people have stopped believing in it here. They blame God for this war.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t believe in the old priests. They’re a waste of space. They go on about the war being a punishment for being bad. I don’t believe that. The war is because some people want to be in charge, and some people just like fighting. Take my soldier here, he likes his job. He would hate it not being in uniform carrying a gun. But he’s not a bad sort. He hasn’t got anything to do with God punishing people or anything.” Jack agreed. If anything the young lieutenant was being an agent for good – restoring two lads to their parents, and this girl to her place to get back into school.
“Perhaps God is still helping people despite the war? It’s just that we don’t recognise Him,” ventured Jack.
“You mean He might be working through my soldier?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. He certainly works through Jalli, and her grandma, and…” (it struck him for the first time) “through my mum too – only she would not say so. I guess He can work through anyone.”
“Is He working through you?” The question made Jack think.
“A month ago I would have laughed at that idea, but not now. In a way I suppose He is. Jalli would say so. But I don’t think about it most of the time.”
“Would He work through me?”
“He probably already is, by getting you to ask all these questions about Him, and me!”
“Sorry.”
“No. I mean it. I reckon God could do all sorts of things through you.”
“But, I’m not a good person.”
“I don’t think that matters – so long as you keep wanting to be better. He keeps showing you that there is so much more to you than you would ever guess. Since I’ve been here I’ve learned so much about myself. I never reckoned myself as good.”
“But you are. You’re different. My friends – well those girls you met the other night. They thought so too. They respected you for leaving. They knew you had a good heart…How do you speak to God?”
“Jalli just talks to Him, like He is here beside her. She just talks to Him like you’re talking to me.”
“Perhaps I’ll try it one day. When it doesn’t seem so weird! Where is your Jalli?”
“Can I trust you with a secret? I don’t want to lie to you. She’s waiting at these lads’ croft for me. The soldiers don’t know she’s in the country.”
“So I can meet her! I’d love to meet her. Can I go with you?”
“But aren’t you on your way home?”
“I’m going with you. He can drop me off on the way back. Hey, soldier,” she shouted into the front. “Go straight to the croft and call into my village on the way back!”
“OK. You having ‘fun’ with our foreign journalist?”
“Sex! That’s all you can think about isn’t it?”
“Only when I’m with you, darling!”
Loops just shrugged her shoulders. “Soldiers!” she sighed.
It was the middle of the afternoon before they approached the croft. The boys had grown less agitated and more excited as the day went on. At first they hadn’t known whether to believe Jack or not. Now it became clear they were really going home. Jack wondered whether the family would find them much changed.
Their arrival was unheralded. The approach of an army vehicle had been watched with apprehension and when it stopped the girls were packed off out the back door. They hadn’t got properly into the bunker though before Mod came running up. “It’s OK. It’s your Jack! And he’s got your brothers!” The girls dashed back down the garden path.
“Jack! Jack!” shouted Jalli. They ran into each other’s arms. The boys were being hugged and kissed. The young lieutenant, Loops and the driver just stood and stared.
“You see why I wanted to come,” proclaimed Loops with tears running down her cheeks, “I got an idea that it would be like this. These people know how to love!”
“Seems so. Bit mushy I’d say,” observed the lieutenant.
“It’s real though, isn’t it?” breathed Loops, “I wonder whether I could ever love like that? I want to meet that girl, Jalli. She seems a marvel. I can see now why Jack wanted to escape us girls the other night. What we did was wrong.”
“You never thought that before.”
“I mean, what we did in trying to get him.”
“What’s different about him that he should get special treatment?”
“This!” she indicated the family that were now all clustering round Jack and singing his praises, “All this genuine delight these people are taking in one another.”
Mr. Somaf came across to the three of them. “Do excuse us,” he said. “We’re not looking after you properly. Come in! Come in! Take tea!” And the two soldiers and the girl were drawn in as friends too. After an hour, Mrs. Somaf declared, “It’s too late to go back to the town tonight. You must a
ll stay the night.”
“But there’s hardly room for us all here,” replied the officer.
“Nonsense!” This was Mrs. Somaf. “We have floor space enough for everyone. It’s not as cold now and we have spare pelts in the loft.” There was no argument to be made, and they accepted the invitation with gratitude. Loops had sat herself beside Jalli and spent hours talking about everything. She was interested in finding out whether Jalli genuinely believed God was real. Jalli had to admit that she had just “grown up with Him.”
And she also had to admit that in her grandma she had had a much better start in life than Loops had had. But perhaps because of that, God could do things with Loops that He could not do through herself, suggested Jalli.
Bedtime was quite interesting with the two youngest lying on the floor between the beds, Tilly, Loops and Jalli all squashed in together, with Jack in the bed next to them. Jalli was overjoyed to have Jack back near her. And she was so proud of him. “How did you manage to do all that?” she whispered.
“No idea. You must have been praying for me.”
“I was.”
“And I was praying for you too. In my way.”
“I know. Thanks… Jack? I love you! I missed you so much,” she whispered.
“Thanks. And I missed you. And I love you too.” He reached out to take her hand.
*
They all rose with the daylight. It was amazing how much breakfast there seemed to be. “Mrs. Somaf, you’re a marvel,” rejoiced Jack.
“Well we’ve got enough food for the time being. We’ll soon have to send these two out hunting.”
“And it’s time for the wild strawberries,” added Bonny. “I’m good at collecting them.”
“But you must all take a lot of care,” said the driver. “There are mines about.”
“Quite right,” agreed the crofter. “You hear that, you youngsters?”
Soon the soldiers and Loops were ready to set off for Loops’ village. “Thanks,” she said earnestly to Jack, taking his hand. “You’ve done something for me.”
The Kicking Tree Page 14
