Soldiers' Wives

by Fiona Field

  Jenna looked up at Seb angrily. ‘“All being well”? Does that mean, if he doesn’t die?’

  Seb nodded. ‘Jenna, there’s no easy way of putting this: he’s very ill.’

  The awfulness of everything on top of a crippling hangover made Jenna’s gorge rise. She swallowed the sour bile back down.

  ‘Shall I make some tea?’ asked Milward.

  ‘Good idea,’ responded Seb, when Jenna didn’t answer. Milward made his way to the kitchen.

  ‘Is there someone you’d like to come and sit with you?’ asked Seb. ‘Your mum lives locally, doesn’t she?’

  Jenna nodded.

  ‘Shall I ring her for you?’

  Jenna shrugged. ‘She’ll have to get the kids off to school first,’ she said tonelessly. Besides, what good would her mum be? She would just flap and fuss. And anyway, she needed to get Dan out of the house before any more people piled in. Shit, what a mess – Lee getting injured on top of everything else. The sodding icing on the fucking cake.

  Captain Fanshaw was saying something to her.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Jenna, we ought to tell Lee’s mum.’

  ‘Must we?’ She couldn’t bear the thought of ringing that old cow. She’d probably blame her for what had happened – Jenna was in no doubt what Sonia Perkins felt about her, and she had enough on her plate without coping with that old biddy’s snide comments.

  ‘She has a right to know. Lee’s her son.’

  ‘He’s my husband,’ she shot back. Silence fell. Jenna considered how shit everything was and how it was all the army’s fault. Her business was ruined, she was in a crap house, and if Lee died, she wouldn’t even have that. Bastards. And Captain Fanshaw was as bad as any of them. The only person in the army she didn’t hate right now was Immi. ‘Ring Immi,’ she decided, suddenly. ‘Ring Immi for me.’

  ‘Immi?’

  ‘Immi Cooper. She a clerk somewhere. In some office in the battalion.’

  ‘I’ll get onto it. Maybe she can make the necessary phone calls, if you’re not up to it. But, Jenna, we have to tell people: other relations, close friends…’

  Major Milward appeared in the door. ‘Can I have a word, Seb?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Seb.

  ‘In private,’ added the major.

  Jenna watched Seb leave her sitting room. In a vague, detached way, she wondered what they were going to talk about. Maybe they’d had an update about Lee. Oh God, she hoped it wasn’t even worse news. What would happen to her if he died?

  She dragged herself off the sofa and followed them; she needed to know what was going on, and anything they had to say, they could say in front of her.

  She stopped dead in horror at the door to the kitchen. The floor was strewn with clothes – hers and Dan’s. There was absolutely no doubt what had gone on the night before and she was caught bang to rights – with the emphasis on the bang.

  Lee felt rank. Worse than he ever had. Everything ached: his head, his body… and his mouth…! He’d had some hangovers, but this was dire. He tried to open his eyes, but they seemed gummed shut and, honestly, he couldn’t really be bothered. And he was so tired – completely, utterly wiped. How could he feel so tired, when he’d been asleep? Nothing seemed to make sense. Everything was blurry, his brain didn’t seem to be functioning properly. Maybe he’d just lie here, till he felt a bit better, and frankly, he didn’t think it’d be possible to feel any worse.

  He tried to marshal his thoughts but everything seemed so woolly. What the hell had he got up to? Drinking? No, that wasn’t right. Ah – Afghan… he remembered, he was in Afghan. He wouldn’t have been on the lash, this couldn’t be a hangover! And then it all came crashing back. Johnny, the firefight, the dead Taliban and then… nothing.

  Oh shit, was he dead too? Was this being dead? And if he was, why did he feel so fucked? Surely dead people were out of it completely. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe this was how it was only no one could come back and tell you being dead was a shit option. And then a wave of wooziness overwhelmed him and grey fuzz clogged his mind, and he sank back into oblivion.

  He could hear voices. In the swirling muddle of some dream, he could hear Chrissie. What was she doing out in the compound? She wasn’t allowed on the front line, she was a medic. But she was here, chatting. She had to leave. If Sergeant Adams found her, he’d go mental. He tried to tell her to get out, get out of the compound, go back, but no words came out. Instead he felt a cool hand on his forehead. What the hell was going on? This was such a nightmare. He had to wake up, he had to open his eyes.

  He managed to crack the left one open and the light was so bright, he screwed it shut again immediately, but not before he’d glimpsed strip lights and a ceiling. This wasn’t the compound.

  ‘Lee? Lee? Are you with us?’

  But that was Chrissie’s voice all right.

  He cracked his eye open a second time, just a smidge, so he wasn’t blinded. Through the fuzz of his eyelashes, he could see her, bending over him.

  ‘Lee, you’re in Bastion, in the hospital. You’re going to pull through.’

  Pull through what? He croaked, ‘What?’

  ‘Water?’

  That wasn’t what he’d meant, but it’d do. He nodded his head a fraction and regretted it. His neck and shoulder felt as if someone was trying to bayonet him. He shut his eye again till the wave of pain subsided.

  He felt something against his mouth – a straw. He sucked and cool water squirted into his mouth. He let it roll around and wash across his teeth and gums before it trickled down his parched throat. He felt his tongue unstick from his palate. That was so good. No pint of beer after an exercise had ever felt as good as this sip of plain water did right now. He took another sip and another.

  ‘Better?’

  This time he managed to open both his eyes. There was Chrissie, her big brown eyes filled with concern and care for him, her curly hair framing her face like a halo. The last time he’d seen her bending over him was when they’d first met, way back on that exercise. Back then he’d thought that was what an angel would look like. Now that feeling was even stronger; now he knew how kind and thoughtful she was; now he thought he loved her. Even if it was wrong, even if he was married to Jenna, he couldn’t help how he felt.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You need to rest some more,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back later.’

  She patted his hand and left. It was only when she had gone that Lee realised that her right arm and shoulder were bandaged and in a sling.

  Jenna sat in her sitting room nursing a cup of tea. Immi sat beside her.

  ‘So,’ said Immi, ‘shall I make those phone calls?’

  ‘I suppose.’ She was still reeling from the awfulness of the morning. First the news, then the look on the two officers’ faces, when they’d seen the evidence of her infidelity. Milward had guessed what had been going on when he went into the kitchen to make tea, and had made sure Fanshaw realised, too. Well, wasn’t that typical of the nasty little man. But, jeez, what a mess. All she’d been able to do was swoop on the clothes and scoop them up, as if it was the leavings of a wayward child and not the result of two sex-crazed adults who’d torn each other’s clothes off, rather than make it up the stairs. She’d slammed the evidence into a cupboard and stared the two men down, silently daring them to make a comment. Hiding the clothes didn’t solve the problem of what they knew, nor the other, worse, problem of getting Dan out of the house, but she’d decided to cross that bridge later. The fact that all her neighbours were gathering in knots on the grass outside, waiting like vultures to pick over the news, wasn’t going to make the latter problem any easier either.

  If Lee hadn’t got himself injured, thought Jenna angrily, she wouldn’t be in this mess now. It was all his fault.

  Still, she thought, as she sipped her tea, she’d finally managed to convince both Seb and Alan Milward that all she needed was Immi for company and that she didn’t need either the commanding officer or t
he padre to see her. And eventually, she’d managed to shove them out of the house. As soon as they’d gone, she threw Dan’s clothes through the bedroom door and told him to get dressed and out right now. They just both had to hope that the other wives would be keeping an eye on the comings and goings at the front door and he’d be able to slip out the back unnoticed. Not that she cared, Jenna told herself. She didn’t care a jot what the other wives thought of her – the cows.

  ‘The calls,’ repeated Immi.

  Jenna sighed. It had to be done. Lee’s mum had to know, and her own mum, and if those two felt there were any other relations who needed to be in the loop, then they could pass on the news. She reached across to the phone and called up the speed dial for Lee’s mother. ‘She’s called Sonia,’ she told Immi.

  Immi nodded and said ‘I remember’, and hit the dial button.

  ‘Hello, it’s Immi here, we met at Christmas. Yes, it was lovely. Sonia… no, nothing like that. Sonia, I’m ringing on behalf of Jenna… Yes, I’m afraid it’s bad news… No, not that bad… Yes, he’s been injured… No, no, a bullet and he’s been operated on…’

  Jenna could hear the wails and sobs down the other end of the phone. What a drama queen. He was going to live, that’s what they’d said. Sonia didn’t have to make such a fuss.

  She saw Immi put her hand over the phone. ‘She wants to come down.’

  ‘Give me the phone.’ She grabbed the receiver. ‘There’s no point,’ she told Sonia bluntly. ‘He’ll go to a hospital in Birmingham when they send him back – whenever that happens. There’s a place there relations can stay, so there’s no need to come here.’ She handed the phone back to Immi and left her to deal with the spluttering and livid mother-in-law. But she didn’t care; if Lee wasn’t around, she wasn’t going to put up with his mother, no way.

  29

  By the time Seb had finished recounting to Maddy what he’d seen in Jenna’s home, her jaw was almost down to her neck-line.

  ‘But you’re not to breathe a word,’ warned Seb. ‘I shouldn’t have told you myself, but I just had to share it with someone.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Maddy. ‘Not even Caro.’

  ‘Especially not Caro,’ said Seb. ‘Honestly, if you tell her, you might just as well make a banner and trail it across the sky behind a plane.’

  ‘She’s not that bad,’ protested Maddy.

  Seb just raised an eyebrow. Maddy didn’t argue. Well, maybe Caro could be a tad indiscreet.

  ‘The really worrying thing is, though—’ said Seb.

  ‘What, apart from the fact that she’s being unfaithful while he’s fighting for his life?’

  ‘Apart from that. The worrying thing is that she seemed to feel that Lee had got injured to make life tricky for her. It was as if she was blaming him. That somehow he’d gone and got shot deliberately.’

  Maddy frowned and shook her head. ‘Surely not. I’m sure you read her wrong. It was probably just panic and worry that made her seem a bit off key.’

  ‘You think?’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘Maybe I should pop round and see if she’s OK. I could take her a casserole or something. I imagine if she’s worried, or in shock, she won’t think about eating properly.’

  Seb snorted. ‘If that’s what you want to believe.’

  ‘I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Any news about Lee?’

  ‘Not yet. They’re going to get him back soon – just as soon as he’s stable.’

  ‘Poor lad.’

  ‘The whole incident was a mess. One of his section got his foot blown off and then a medic, going in to rescue them, got shot. She’s going to be put forward for a gong.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘They have women out there.’

  ‘I know that. Just the thought that they’re getting shot at is a little disconcerting.’

  ‘But they’re soldiers,’ said Seb, ‘so why not?’

  He had a point, thought Maddy. She just hoped they had the means to shoot back!

  Seb suddenly grinned again.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ said Maddy. Frankly, she couldn’t see much to laugh about in the situation. A wife having sex while her husband was away, three soldiers injured, two of them catastrophically – yeah, a barrel of laughs.

  ‘I was just remembering Alan’s face, when I met him in the kitchen. He told me on the way back to the battalion that he’d seen the insides of dozens of quarters, so had just assumed the kitchen was a mess, that Jenna hadn’t bothered to tidy up the washing or something. It was only when he realised it was a bra hanging off the fridge door that he spotted that the clothes were his and hers.’

  Even Maddy could see the funny side to this. ‘And he’s such a humourless old fart.’

  Seb’s eye twinkled and crinkled. ‘And then of course we both realised that the bloke had to still be in the house, unless she’d bundled him out the back without a stitch to wear.’

  That was too much for Maddy and she collapsed with laughter. ‘God, it’s a French farce,’ she said, rocking with mirth. Then she sobered up.

  Except it wasn’t for poor Lee Perkins. Injured and with an unfaithful wife… for him it was all crap, really.

  Chrissie sat at the desk in the NAAFI and typed her password, one-handed, into the shared computer. Then she hit the Skype icon. Was Immi online? Whoo hoo. She hit the call button. The ring tone blipped from the computer speakers. And then up came Immi’s face.

  ‘Hi, Chrissie,’ said Immi. ‘How’s things?’ Then she noticed the sling. ‘You’ve been in the wars. What happened?’

  ‘Got shot,’ said Chrissie. She relayed the story.

  ‘You’re joking me,’ said Immi. She sounded completely stunned. ‘And you were rescuing Lee?’ Chrissie nodded. ‘Bloody hell. And you ended up getting shot.’

  ‘It’s just a flesh wound. They’re going to send me back too, though. I’m not much use now I can’t work, and they want to do some surgery on it to reduce the scarring.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Chrissie, that doesn’t sound like nothing to me. It must have hurt.’

  Chrissie nodded. ‘It did a bit, but I didn’t notice properly till the excitement died down.’ But she hadn’t called to talk about herself. ‘How’s Jenna? How did she take the news?’

  ‘Not brilliantly. No,’ said Immi, ‘that’s not quite what I meant. She was really quite calm about it. OK, so poor old Lee hasn’t lost a limb or anything, but it was a shocking bullet wound. Old Milward told me she wanted me to be there to make the phone calls and everything, but it was almost like she couldn’t be bothered, not that she couldn’t cope because she was so upset. Honest, Chrissie, I know shock takes people different ways, but Jenna was really weird. She says she’s had it with the army. She says she doesn’t want anything to do with the welfare system here and isn’t sure about accepting the army arrangements to go and stay at the hospital so she can visit Lee. I’m worried about her, Chrissie, I really am.’

  ‘And if she’s in a bad way, it won’t help Lee. It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’

  ‘When do you think you and Lee’ll be coming back?’

  ‘I’m scheduled on the next medevac flight and if Lee’s lucky, so will he, but at the mo he’s not too clever and they’re keeping him pretty sedated.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound great.’

  ‘The bullet that hit him made a real mess of his shoulder – smashed his shoulder blade, apparently, and punctured a lung, plus it caused huge blood loss. Actually, he’s bloody lucky. The bullet stopped up against his spinal cord – another inch and it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘Shit, that’s awful.’

  Chrissie nodded. ‘He’s going to need lots of physio when he gets better if he wants to get full movement back in his right arm, but the medics here are hopeful.’

  ‘So some good news, then.’

  ‘I’ll keep you in the picture. I’m going to go now. I want to pop over to the hospital and see Lee.’

  ‘Give him my love
,’ said Immi.

  ‘And you tell Jenna he’s getting the best treatment.’

  Chrissie flicked off Skype and logged off. Time to visit Lee. She felt happy at the prospect. She walked out of the air-conditioned NAAFI into the suddenly searing heat. It had gone from winter to ‘blast-furnace’ in about ten days, and Chrissie found it exhausting. How ironic, she thought, as she tramped the mile or so to the hospital, that she’d come out here to get away from Lee and yet events had conspired to drive them even closer together.

  ‘Hey!’ A familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.

  Chrissie turned round. ‘Hey, Phil. Off duty?’

  He nodded. ‘Just been stood down. Where are you off to?’

  ‘Thought I’d drop in on Lee – see how he’s doing.’

  ‘Cool. Want some company?’

  No, she didn’t, she’d like to have Lee all to herself, but how could she tell Phil and not have eyebrows raised? ‘Sure.’

  ‘And I’ve got something to show you.’

  Phil fell into step beside Chrissie as they stomped over the grey, dusty ground, between the rows of prefabs and tents with an arc of cloudless sky above them. ‘Oh, what?’ She had to raise her voice as a helicopter took off and clattered overhead.

  Phil waited for it to thunder off, over the perimeter fence, before he hauled his day sack off his back and pulled out a netbook. ‘I’ve got a new film downloaded.’ He waved the little computer at her enticingly before they set off again.

  ‘Great, what is it?’

  ‘Top Hat.’

  ‘Oooh, one of my favourites.’

  ‘Thought it might be.’

  ‘Although I loved Flying Down to Rio.’

  ‘Did you? Now, I preferred Shall We Dance.’

  They strode on, pausing in their discussion of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films only when aircraft and helicopters thundered in and out of the base, deafening them both, until they reached the field hospital. Inside, the air con brought the temperature back down to something approaching normal, although it was so cold compared to the outside that Chrissie’s skin instantly broke out in goose pimples.

  They made their way through the myriad tented corridors joining together the prefab buildings, till they got to Lee’s ward. He was still lying motionless on his bed, his eyes shut, the drip delivering pain relief still connected into one arm, a drip of saline going into the other, and electrodes and monitors connected to other bits of him. Around him, machines beeped and blipped intermittently.