Soldiers' Wives

by Fiona Field

  Immi shrugged. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t got the shakes. A whole two weeks with no booze? Respect, sister. And honest, babes, you’d have done the same for me. You don’t have to buy me a drink.’

  Which was true, but Chrissie had made her mind up.

  ‘Can I be a bit cheeky?’ asked Immi.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘There’s a girl I’ve got to know at the hairdresser’s – you know, Zoë’s?’ Chrissie nodded. She’d heard of the place although she’d never set foot in it. ‘She’s called Jenna and she’s having a tough time of it, ’cos she married this squaddie and they haven’t got a quarter yet. Her mum lives locally, but she has to share a bedroom with her sister and he still lives in barracks, so her married life has hardly got off to a flying start.’

  ‘So why did they get married? I mean, if they can’t live together it seems pretty pointless.’

  ‘But if they’re not married they won’t ever qualify for a quarter. It’s mad. Anyway, her bloke has been away on some months-long course or other, then he gets back, only to be sent straight off on that exercise. She’s been totally pissed off by it all and is really in the dumps. How about we invite her along too? She’s nice,’ added Immi. ‘You’ll like her.’

  ‘Won’t she want to meet up with her hubby, though? Shouldn’t he be back by now?’

  ‘Some of the battalion aren’t due back till late tonight, or so I’ve heard. If he’s one of them…’

  Chrissie shrugged. ‘Why not? The more the merrier. Although I’m not going to make it a late one; a couple of bevvies then I’m going to hit the hay. I’m knackered.’

  Immi grabbed her phone and called her friend, while Chrissie lay on her bed and let her mind drift back to the exercise.

  Had she enjoyed it? Had real soldiering come up to the mark? She contemplated the previous two weeks. Sure it had been grim, just as she had told Immi. The latrines had been vile, the food had mostly been compo rations, eaten cold out of tins, the weather had been dreary and sleep had been almost non-existent, but that wasn’t the whole truth. It had been amazing to be part of something so massive, so organised. There had been a buzz of excitement, a sense of purpose, teamwork and camaraderie, all those things she’d yearned for when she was growing up. All those things that had been so horribly lacking, while her heavy responsibilities made her increasingly isolated from her peers. But all anyone now cared about was how she performed and how she fitted in. And she did. She absolutely did. It wasn’t a bit like school when she’d been the only one who could never have a sleepover, the only one who couldn’t accept birthday party invites, because she could never reciprocate. Now she was exactly like everyone else – OK, she was still in a minority because of her ethnicity but no one gave a fuck about that. She had the same kit, the same training, the same ethos, the same everything and she loved it. Yes, she’d even loved that exercise, she thought. Maybe it was time to start hoping that the army might consider moving her on to the next stage – putting her training to a real test, not just playing at being a medic on exercise. It was a good thought.

  ‘What are you grinning about?’ asked Immi.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Chrissie, straightening her face quickly. She didn’t think Immi would understand.

  ‘Didn’t look like nothing to me.’

  ‘Just pleased to be back and in the warm and dry,’ she fibbed.

  ‘Who wouldn’t be?’ said Immi with a shudder. Her idea of privation was being made to do without straightening irons. ‘You all set, babes? And Jenna’s coming over to meet us. She sent her old man a text but he hasn’t replied. She sounded well pissed off.’

  Chrissie rolled off her bed. ‘So – we’re meeting her there? Ace. There’s a Bacardi and Coke with my name on it and I’m going to claim it.’

  2

  The soldiers’ bar was packed when they got there, as it always was on a Friday night. Soldiers tended to save Friday and Saturday for getting shit-faced – and stayed comparatively sober for the rest of the week. Smelling of stale booze or swaying with a hangover didn’t go down well with the sergeant major at the morning muster parade.

  Chrissie sent Immi off to bag a seat, while she squeezed her way to the bar, catching snippets of conversations as the soldiers swung the lamp, with exaggerated tales of their performance on the manoeuvres.

  ‘… so I said to this SAS guy, you’re not hard, you’re a twat, and he legged it. The big girl’s blouse.’

  ‘… then the sergeant major came up to me and he only fucking said I’d pulled Captain Wiggins’ chestnuts out of the fire for him. Without me the whole platoon would have been up shit creek.’

  ‘… and this bird was about to drop her trousers for a piss and I thought I was going to get a really good look at her snatch and some stupid fucker goes and lends her his poncho. Where’s the fun in that?’

  Chrissie grinned as she eavesdropped: soldiers, what are they like, she thought. She finally got served with drinks for them both and took them over to where Immi sat in a corner away from the TV and the fruit machines where relative peace reigned. She’d just sat down, when Immi glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘Ooh look, there’s Jenna now,’ said Immi. ‘Jenna,’ she hollered in a voice a sergeant major would be proud of. ‘Over here.’ She stood up and waved. There was an exchange of sign language. ‘She just getting herself a drink,’ said Immi.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Chrissie looked at the slender back view of Immi’s friend as she waved a ten pound note and tried to catch the eye of the barman. She might not be catching his but she turned the heads of every other bloke present with a silver river of hair that streamed down her back and endless legs clad in skin-tight jeans. If the front view was half as good as the back, thought Chrissie, her husband was a lucky man.

  Jenna got served, gathered up her drink and her change and tottered over to join Immi and Chrissie. Wow, thought Chrissie when she saw Jenna’s face, although it was obviously a high maintenance look. For a start the eyelashes just had to be false. Instantly, Chrissie wished she’d made a bit more of an effort. A lick of mascara and a quick brush of her hair was no contest for this vision of personal grooming now sitting opposite. But although Jenna might look like a million dollars, from the set of her face, it wasn’t making her happy.

  Chrissie introduced herself and reasoned that maybe she wouldn’t feel happy either, if she hadn’t seen her bloke for months.

  ‘Jenna,’ said her new acquaintance. ‘And thanks for the invite.’ She put her mobile and her drink on the table.

  ‘No worries,’ said Chrissie. ‘Nice to meet you.’ She smiled at Immi’s friend, who smiled back, but with a slight air of dissatisfaction.

  ‘I haven’t seen you down Zoë’s place.’

  ‘No, well…’ Chrissie was spared having to explain that she wasn’t really into that sort of stuff, by Jenna’s phone trilling.

  ‘’Scuse me,’ Jenna said as she picked it up. ‘Oooh, yes… Lovely… In the corner… Yeah, see you in two ticks, hon.’ Her face was transformed by a happy smile.

  ‘Your old man going to make it, then?’ said Immi. ‘We’re going to get to meet him at last?’

  Jenna nodded, still grinning. ‘I’m hoping that now he’s back for a bit, we can get someone to sort out a quarter for us. I’m sick of living at my mum’s.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Immi.

  ‘I mean don’t get me wrong, I love my mum, but I can’t take her new bloke, Pete. He’s a creep – don’t know what she sees in him but she says I’m just being a cow. I swear he fancies our Shona more than my mum. It’s just the way he sometimes looks at her, and she’s only seventeen…’

  ‘That’s not nice,’ murmured Immi.

  ‘No, it isn’t, and I told Mum, but she says I’m imagining it and won’t listen. I just hope I’m wrong.’ Jenna shuddered. ‘And Mum’s been tricky about me moving back home – I think Shona got used to having her own room and now she’s kicking off ’cos she’s having to share and Mum is gettin
g fed up with that…’ Jenna sighed. ‘But it wasn’t my fault my job in London went tits up,’ she finished, morosely.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d worked there,’ said Immi.

  Jenna shook her head. ‘It was pants, it didn’t work out, it was a dream job.’ A wistful look came into her eyes.

  ‘So what was it?’ asked Immi.

  ‘I got an apprenticeship as a stylist with Marky Markham—’

  ‘No shit!’ squealed Immi.

  Jenna nodded. ‘Straight up.’

  Chrissie was at a loss. Who the hell was Marky Markham? But Immi was impressed so presumably Jenna had landed something good.

  ‘Yeah,’ continued Jenna, ‘it was a fab job but the pay was shit and the cost of living in London meant I could barely afford to eat. It was a nightmare. It broke my heart when I had to throw in the towel, because half of his clients are like A-listers. I mean I’ve shampooed some well famous hair – Kylie’s, Davina’s, the Duchess of Wotserface’s, loads…’

  ‘Wow. Fantastic.’

  ‘That bit was but the pay…’ She shook her head and sighed.

  ‘That’s so wrong,’ sympathised Immi.

  Jenna snorted disgustedly. ‘And unfair. Just because I couldn’t rely on the bank of Mum and Dad. There were two other apprentices but they were from like Epsom and Kingston,’ her voice dripped with sarcasm as she said the place names, ‘and it didn’t matter to them if their pay was crap. Mummy and Daddy bailed them out.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Like my mum, with Shona and the twins all still at home, could do the same for me. And it didn’t help that Scuzzy Pete was out of work at the time and sponging off her, so there was even less chance of her having any spare cash.’

  ‘Oh, hon, that’s so unfair.’

  ‘Wasn’t it just,’ said Jenna, looking angry and upset in equal measure. Then she tossed her beautiful hair defiantly. ‘Gotta move on though, and I’m going to show everyone. One day I’m going to be a bigger and better hairdresser than Marky Markham.’

  ‘Go, you,’ said Immi. She leaned over and put her hand on Jenna’s. ‘And you know what? I totes believe in you.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be living the dream soon; got the gorgeous husband, I’ll soon have the house and then all I need is the salon and I’ll be on my way. I’m already in with a load of the officers’ wives, who can afford the sort of prices I’d like to charge. And talking of gorgeous hubby…’ She waved. ‘Over here, babe,’ she called.

  ‘Nice one,’ said Immi, sotto voce to Chrissie, as they both clocked the gorgeous hubby – which he certainly was. ‘No wonder Jenna’s missed him, anyone would.’ Immi was right; any girl with a pulse would want to keep this Zac Efron lookalike – thickly lashed eyes, level brows and smiley mouth – close to her. But it wasn’t just dark eyes and white, even teeth; this guy was tanned, tall and fantastically built. Frankly, thought Chrissie, he could be the British Army’s poster boy.

  He hooked out a chair at their table with his foot and sat down, leaning over to give Jenna a kiss. Jenna instantly wrapped her arms around him and gave every impression she was trying to eat him.

  Immi and Chrissie both turned their attention to their drinks. They’d sunk a good half of them by the time Jenna came up for air.

  ‘Hi.’ Immi extended her hand. ‘I’m Immi, what’s your name?’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Immi, I’m Lee Perkins,’ he answered, in a heavy Geordie accent.

  Chrissie’s drink fell out of her hand and dropped onto the table where the glass shattered and sticky Bacardi and Coke spilled across the polished wood before splattering onto the floor.

  ‘Fuck,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You want to be careful about saying that, bonny lass,’ said Lee lazily. ‘Some soldiers might take it as an invitation.’

  Well, I wouldn’t say no, thought Chrissie. God, he was gorgeous without his cam cream on, the most fanciable bloke she’d ever met in the flesh and she felt an instant and instinctive surge of raw lust, despite the fact she knew he was Jenna’s husband. So she kept her face turned away from him as she raced off to the bar to get a replacement drink, and a damp cloth and dustpan to clear up the mess. She hoped to God that Lee hadn’t recognised her because, looks or no looks, if he was like most soldiers she’d encountered in her nine months in the army, he’d tell everyone about what he’d done and how she’d reacted. She’d be a laughing stock – a medic who couldn’t cope with the sight of blood. OK, it had been worse than that, but, as Chrissie well knew, soldiers weren’t fussy about the honest truth when it came to a good anecdote. But thankfully, when she returned to her table Lee and Jenna were once again engrossed in each other.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ asked Immi, as Chrissie got busy with clearing up the mess.

  Chrissie felt her face flushing. ‘Nothing,’ she mumbled, not looking up.

  ‘Nothing, my arse,’ hissed Immi. ‘What do you know about Lee?’

  ‘Nothing,’ protested Chrissie more loudly. Did Immi really want to know that her mate’s husband was the soldier who had had a few kilos of pig guts strapped around his waist a couple of days earlier? That this was the guy she’d honked over? Probably not. And, even if Immi did, she couldn’t be trusted not to open her mouth and say something daft. No, least said, soonest mended… or something.

  ‘When he said his name you jumped like you’d been stung.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ God, why couldn’t Immi give it a rest?

  Immi raised her eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Have it your way. Anyway, it doesn’t matter; it isn’t as if he’s available. More’s the pity.’

  ‘You can’t blame him for going for Jenna, though,’ Chrissie said. ‘She’s very pretty.’

  ‘So she bloody should be, given that she works in the beauty industry. All that access to all those lovely products. Have you ever thought of having your hair coloured?’ said Immi, examining the ends of her rich chestnut hair: this week’s colour of choice.

  Chrissie shook her head. ‘It’s just so much faff. And you keep having to have the roots done or it looks rank. Frankly, I’d rather go for a decent run than spend hours having my hair dyed.’

  ‘You could do it yourself.’

  Chrissie shook her head. ‘You know what a prat I am when it comes to stuff like that. I’d mess it up and end up with green hair, or something. Can you imagine what the boss would say?’

  Their platoon sergeant was nearly as ferocious as the RSM and another person to avoid getting on the wrong side of. Outlandish hair would be certain to press Sergeant Wilkes’s buttons.

  ‘Oh, get a room,’ murmured Immi, as Lee and Jenna started snogging again. ‘You know, from what Jenna’s told me, she’d barely met Lee before she got him up the aisle. I mean, I know looks-wise he’s quite a catch, but I can’t see why civvies like Jenna want to date soldiers, let alone marry them. They’re never around, they’re always in fights—’

  ‘On the other hand,’ interrupted Chrissie, ‘they’ve got money in their pockets and some girls have a thing about blokes in uniform.’

  And this last was, Chrissie knew, one of Immi’s reasons for joining. In fact, as far as Chrissie could see, Immi’s only motivation, given the amount of time she spent chatting up the male soldiers. All the other things the army might provide – comradeship, sport, excitement – Immi ignored. While Chrissie had been picked for the battalion athletics team and had hopes of getting into the hockey team, Immi only just managed to scrape through her annual fitness test and threw a strop if she was made to do anything that involved leaving the comfort of her clerical job in the 1st Battalion, the Hertfordshire Regiment’s orderly room. The thought of rushing round battlefields like Chrissie might have to, picking up wounded soldiers, was Immi’s idea of hell on earth.

  Lee extricated himself from Jenna’s grasp. She was a beautiful girl, no doubt about that, and he knew they made a smashing couple – 1 Herts’ very own Posh and Becks – but just sometimes he wished she could be a little less full-on. He was getting fed up with all t
he leg-pulling his comrades dished out to him about being married – suggesting that he needed Jenna’s permission for everything: blowing his nose, taking a dump… and snogging like this in Tommy’s Bar wasn’t going to help matters any.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ he told her.

  ‘Lee! I’ve barely seen you for weeks, months even. Just the odd poxy weekend.’ She pouted. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘It’ll be better when we get a quarter. I’ll go and see the new boss as soon as I can. I’ve heard on the grapevine he’s a sound bloke. And he’s married, so he should be sympathetic.’ His new platoon commander had only been posted in to the company at the start of the exercise, so Lee hadn’t encountered him yet, but the rumour was that he was OK.

  ‘We could still go somewhere tonight,’ wheedled Jenna. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ she cooed, putting her hand on his crotch and giving the bulge there a gentle rub. ‘You know you want to.’ She rubbed harder. ‘Doesn’t your genie want to come out and play?’

  Lee removed her hand. ‘Jenna, I’m knackered.’

  ‘Just a quickie? Please. Just for me?’

  Lee relented. Why not? Shit, if he was getting all the flak for being married, he might as well make full use of the benefits. ‘Oh, OK then. Get your coat, you’ve pulled.’

  Jenna leapt up with a squeal of delight. ‘Oooh, Lee Perkins, I do love you!’

  They said a hurried goodbye to Immi and Chrissie before pushing their way through the crowds of soldiers in the bar, ignoring the lewd gestures, the catcalls and the ‘we-know-where-you’re-going’ comments, and back into the fresh air.

  Ten minutes later Jenna was struggling up the uneven path behind the barracks in her high heels while Lee marvelled that she could walk in them at all, especially over this rough terrain. Finally she declared they’d gone far enough not to be tripped over by other couples from the barracks also in search of some privacy, although Lee suspected that her shoes had more to do with this than their distance from the camp.