by Andy McNab
‘So we drink two!’ Her whisper was loud. Everything about Leanne was loud. ‘We’re celebrating!’
‘What are we celebrating?’ asked Jenny. They followed her to the kitchen and plonked themselves down at the small table as she reached for glasses.
Leanne looked mysterious.
‘I’ve got some news,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m wrapped around the outside of a glass of vino.’
‘Did Steve mind staying with the boys?’ asked Jenny.
Leanne grimaced. ‘I didn’t ask him if he minded.’
‘My mum came over to look after the kids,’ said Rose. ‘Gerry’s at the pub with Dave and the lads.’
Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sure they meet up there to moan about their wives.’
‘Bastards,’ said Leanne. ‘They’re all bastards.’
Jenny thought about Dave. She knew he wasn’t a bastard. Her fury had drained away now, leaving her exhausted, as if she had spent the evening running instead of arguing. How could they both have been so angry? Dave had stood right here in the kitchen, his hands on his hips, the features which she loved and had longed to see all the time he was away contorted with the effort of containing his anger to a whisper.
She was still holding the bottle of wine. Leanne took it gently from her and poured it.
‘Get this down you, Jenn,’ she said.
‘Come on!’ said Rose. ‘Before that baby screams.’
They clinked glasses. Jenny’s felt cold in her hand. She sipped the wine and found it pleasantly sharp. It smelled of fruit. Suddenly she thought of summer, of sitting out in the back garden with Dave while Vicky played contentedly on the lawn in the evening sunshine before bed. But not last summer. Because last summer he had been in Afghanistan. While she had been giving birth to Jaime.
‘This is nice!’ she said, picking up the bottle. Dave had started to develop a liking for wine in the last year or two and she had bought him a book about it for Christmas. Then, while he was away in theatre, she’d read it herself. She studied the label now. ‘I think it’s a good one.’
‘It’s out of that case of booze the platoon commander gave us.’
‘Gordon Weeks?’
‘Yep. Steve hardly knew the bloke.’ Steve had been casevaced home at the start of the last tour. ‘People keep giving us things because of Steve’s leg. He only has to go into the pub and everyone buys him a pint.’
‘Does he get legless?’ Rose asked. Jenny gave a dutiful guffaw. Leanne frowned and topped up her glass.
‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘Excuse me if I don’t laugh but there probably isn’t a legless joke left on earth which I haven’t heard.’
‘Sorry, Leanne.’ Rose flushed. She had a small, round face with skin which reddened so easily to the colour of her hair that it seemed transparent.
‘Come on then, Leanne,’ Jenny said. ‘Tell us your news.’
Lance Corporal Billy Finn was in a pub with old photos and horse brasses on the wall which could have been anywhere but happened to be near Kempton Park. He looked around. Nothing interesting about the place. Nothing interesting about the people. Old men. Few women.
On the TV at the end of the bar was today’s horse racing from Kempton. It was the two thirty all over again. A mate had given Finn an insider’s tip and it had seemed worth driving to Kempton to enjoy the sight of his 25 to 1 punt romping home first. Over the day the odds with the course bookies had shortened and he had felt more and more confident.
The race had begun and the horse had leaped into the lead and then stayed a nose ahead of the field. It was a good jumper and, watching it sail over the hurdles, Finn experienced that soaring feeling he loved, a surge of joy which could turn a grey, cold day into summer and the chapped, red faces of the race-goers beautiful. His heart lifted and beat faster to a new rhythm of its own. His horse would be first past the post and then everything else would be right with the world too. Because when one thing went well, the rest fell into place …
‘They’re showing the two thirty from Kempton!’ said an old man at the bar standing next to him. ‘Just you watch number three, Asbo Boy!’
On the screen, Finn’s horse was again leaping out of the starting stalls and leading the field by a nose, its mane and tail flying. Finn allowed his spirits to soar briefly once more even though he knew what would happen next.
There it was, number three, a big, dull thug, more elephant than horse, lumbering up on the inside. There was another, a bay, close behind it. Finn blinked slowly and, when he opened his eyes, number three was loping past his horse and the bay was just about to. Behind them the sky was leaden and the faces of the punters pinched and cold.
‘Gooo on!’ roared the old man at the screen as Asbo Boy passed the winning post.
‘Have any money on that?’ asked Finn.
‘Yep, a tenner!’ announced the old man proudly.
‘On Asbo Boy? At sixty-six to one?’ demanded Finn in disbelief.
‘I saw him in the paddock and I said to myself: That’s the one. I reckon I’ve got an eye for a good horse.’
Finn glanced at the man, who was probably over a hundred years old and wore such thick glasses that he could hardly see his pint, let alone a good horse.
Finn sighed. After Asbo Boy and the bay had pushed his horse into third place, the rest of the afternoon had been predictable. Loser after loser. Finn had been glad to get into his new car – well, second-hand new – and zoom away from the racecourse. But then he had felt an itch in his throat which said he needed a pint.
The old man at the bar was still smiling. ‘Sixty-six to one!’ he repeated happily.
‘It’s a great feeling,’ said Finn. ‘When your horse overtakes the field.’
‘Yeah. There’s nothing else sets your heart beating like that by the time you get to my age.’
Finn drank his pint thoughtfully. Afghanistan made your heart beat a lot faster than any race could. Fighting in theatre was real excitement. Racing was just pretend excitement because it didn’t really matter who won. You could make it matter by having a bet. But in Afghanistan you realized that racing wasn’t real. There, your heart beat every time you got out of a wagon into the hot, harsh terrain, knowing the enemy might be anywhere and your life could depend on your eyes and your wits and your speed with a rifle. The races were a poor substitute for that. Everything at home in England was flat and dull in comparison. Suddenly, surprisingly, piercingly, Finn felt a longing to go back.
Rifleman Mal Bilaal sat in the barracks under the No Smoking sign and made a roll-up. Rifleman Angus McCall, propped up against a bed, watched him.
‘You going home for the weekend, Angry?’ asked Mal.
‘Nah. It’s not long since I saw my mum. And too fucking soon since I seen my dad.’
‘What about your mates, then?’
‘My old mates are nothing but a bunch of tossers,’ spat Angus. ‘All the time I’ve been slotting the Taliban for real they haven’t done nothing but hang around in the same old places and play CoD. And when I try telling them what it’s really like out there, they don’t want to know. Tossers.’
It didn’t take much to turn Angry from brooding to apoplectic. Mal passed him a roll-up and then started on his own. He said: ‘My mum and dad are talking about coming down again.’
Mal’s family had travelled all the way from Manchester to see him a couple of weeks ago. Angus had been shocked when they walked in because Mal drank and got off with fit girls in clubs just like any normal person. But when Angus saw his family he had to admit to himself that Mal wasn’t normal. Because he was a Muslim.
His dad was brown-skinned and smiling. A couple of Mal’s sisters, one in particular, were downright fit. But his mum! She dressed like the civilians in Afghanistan. She didn’t actually wear a sheet thing all over her face but she had a scarf across her hair. And when she spoke she sounded like she’d only just got off the boat. It had taken all Angus’s concentration to understand what she was saying.
He’d nodded and grinned while she held his big hand somehow inside her tiny one, talking to him until Mal dragged her off. Despite the clothes and scarf, the woman had shown him a lot of respect. Angus tried to imagine his own mother greeting one of his mates so warmly. Impossible. And impossible to imagine his dad looking at Angus with the same pride and affection Mr Bilaal showed his son.
‘Your mum’s really nice,’ Angus said now to Mal. Mal lay back and blew a thin line of smoke from the skinny roll-up.
‘I’m fucking worried about her. It’s driving me crazy that there’s people in Wythenshawe out to get my mum.’
Angus laughed. ‘Out to get your mum? Get? Your mum?’
Mal nodded. His face was beginning to narrow with anger. His eyes widened; his voice was raised.
‘And my dad and all of them. Because there’s some people in Wythenshawe don’t agree with me fighting my Muslim brothers out in Afghanistan. And you know how they show it? They’ve put petrol and flames through her letterbox. Proper fucked up the carpet, and she likes to keep it nice.’
Angry breathed out noisily. ‘Whooooar. They could kill your mum and dad doing that.’
Mal’s voice grew louder. ‘Shit, man, you don’t know how I worry about it. And there’s my brothers’ taxis: someone tried to torch them. That’s everything they’ve got, their living, all gone up in smoke! And my sisters are walking down the street and there’s blokes who come up to them and spit right at them. At my sisters. And they ain’t done nothing wrong. I’ll tell you. I want to go up there to Wythenshawe and I want to sort these people out. I just want to fight them till they stop. Or till one of us dies.’ His hands closed into fists and his knuckles whitened.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Angus. ‘I never seen you so upset, mate.’
‘Well, it’s all because I’m in the army, right? So it’s my fault. My mum and my dad and all my brothers and sisters, they all got trouble because of me.’
Angus’s fury was easily triggered on his friends’ behalf and now his face was reddening.
‘Shit! Shit, go up there, Mal! Sort it!’
‘I can’t—’
‘These bastards are bothering your whole family! Don’t let them get away with it! You’ve got to go up there and see them off!’
Faced with Angus’s fury, Mal seemed to deflate and his own anger became smaller.
‘They’ve asked me not to, Angry. They say I’ll just cause more trouble. That’s why they come down here.’
‘You’ve got to sort it, mate.’
‘I was thinking of it at the end of the tour when the first letter-box fire happened but Sarge said to me, he says: No, listen to your family. They don’t want you up there making things worse.’
‘Did your mum tell the police?’
‘Yeah. And the police don’t do nothing. Community relations or some crap reason.’
‘Fucking hell.’
Mal hung his head and drummed his fingers on the top of a tin of lager. ‘If there was some way I could kill him, I would,’ he said miserably. ‘I mean it. I want to kill him.’
‘Kill who?’ demanded Angus. ‘Is it just one bloke doing these things?’
‘There’s more than one but I know who the main man is. It’s my friend Aamir.’
‘Your friend! A fucking friend’s torching your mum’s hallway!’
‘Well, he used to be my friend. All through primary school. Then we went to the Quran study centre every week and he used to be round at ours all the time; my mum treated him like her own son. Then we got old enough to discover girls. Man, I knew what I wanted. And I wasn’t going to get it at the mosque so—’
‘Where does he work, then, this Aamir?’ Angus was impatient.
‘Big furniture warehouse shop by the motorway, the last I heard.’
‘What’s the name of this warehouse?’
Mal thought. ‘Dunno. World in Your Lounge. Lounge in Your World. Something like that. My mum went there once but she said their chairs was too pricey unless they was on special offer.’
Angus chewed the roll-up, his eyes half shut. Mal looked closely at him.
‘So … why’re you asking?’
Chapter Two
DAVE WAS THINKING that if he stayed at the pub late with the lads then by the time he got home Jenny would be asleep and he would find the bedroom dark and her back turned silently towards him and their stupid row would hang around in the air all day tomorrow. He decided to finish his pint and then slither home along the icy streets to make his peace.
But before he could gulp it down, the atmosphere in the pub changed suddenly. All movement stopped.
‘Shhhhh!’ people were hissing.
Then someone roared: ‘Quiet!’
Even the pool game paused so that every neck could wind around towards the big screen on the wall. Usually it showed sports but now there was a news programme. The pub fell completely silent as everyone watched men in desert camouflage jumping into wagons and screaming out of a base somewhere in Afghanistan. Every man in the room recognized, the way he recognized his oldest friend, the Hesco, the wheels turning in hot dust, the contained, focused energy visible on the faces of the soldiers who were leaving base to confront an enemy. Watching them, Dave could almost feel the Osprey on his back.
‘… Prime Minister has given an undertaking to the American President to supply temporary reinforcement from the UK to help tackle the problem. The UK hasn’t yet committed on numbers but it is expected that further troops will be arriving in Helmand within the next few weeks. Meanwhile, despite American efforts, the Taliban is increasing its hold on the area.’
Dave glanced around. All eyes were fixed on the screen. Every man suddenly looked sharp and alert.
‘The reason is clear to see …’ announced the journalist. The picture flickered and suddenly they were in the Green Zone, flying low over huge, irrigated fields.
‘Poppies. Afghanistan is the world’s biggest poppy producer and the resin from these plants will find its way on to the world’s streets, particularly those of Europe and America, as heroin. There is no other crop Afghan farmers can produce which will give them a return like this one, even though growing it is illegal and the risks are high.’
Poppy flowers, blazing red, a few white, filled the screen as though it was on fire.
‘Despite attempts to sabotage it, the indications are that this year’s poppy harvest in Helmand Province will be a bumper one. And that means bumper profits not just for the farmer but for the Taliban, who rely on it for much of their funding. No wonder, then, that the American President sees the war on poppies as a double war – against the illegal drugs industry and against the insurgents.
‘Britain does not take part in the poppy-eradication programme. But while America does so, the Prime Minister has pledged further support by temporarily increasing troop numbers.’
The screen flickered to the next story. A new report suggested that British teenagers were leaving school with a low reading age and a grave-faced journalist stood outside a school gate to discuss this with a head teacher. The soldiers did not move, not even to drink. They remained silent, watching the screen as though hanging on the head teacher’s every word. But not one of them was listening to her. They were all rooted to the spot by the same amazing thought.
‘I’m going to get a job!’ announced Leanne excitedly.
‘Oh! What kind of job?’ asked Jenny. She didn’t want to ruin Leanne’s news by saying that she was looking for a job too.
‘Anything. My favourite is one at the garden centre. I applied for it last week. And the company which makes ammo over by the helicopter base is taking shift workers …’ She took an enormous gulp of wine. ‘Because I’ve made a decision. I don’t have to stay at home and get yelled at by Steve all the time. I can make my own money and spend it how I like. Got any crisps, Jenn?’
Jenny rummaged in a cupboard. At the back she found a bag of spicy tortilla chips and threw them over to Leanne.
‘What ab
out the boys?’ asked Rose. ‘Will you send them to nursery?’
‘Nah, not if you mean that new place everyone’s drooling over. The Magic Cottage. Called that because they magic so much money out of your account into theirs.’ Leanne opened the chips and stuffed some into her mouth. ‘There’s the camp nursery and I’ll pay Adi to take them as well and Steve’s not going off on training like he used to so he might be able to help.’
‘Have you told him?’ asked Jenny.
Leanne shook her head.
‘Nah. I’m going to get a job first and then he won’t have much choice.’
‘But Steve’s not staying in Stores,’ Rose said. ‘He’s telling everyone he’s going back into 1 Platoon.’
‘They’ll never let him with one leg,’ said Leanne. She glanced down at her own hand, full of chips, powdery with spices, as if it belonged to someone else. ‘Eat some, girls!’ she cried. ‘Save me from myself.’
She relinquished the bag only long enough for Rose to dip into it once. Then she grabbed it back again.
‘They might be stale,’ said Jenny apologetically. Leanne did not hear her.
‘Steve’s driving me crazy. He’s always angry about something and mostly he’s angry with the army for not putting him back in the platoon with the other lads. I mean, he’s fucking good with his prosthetic leg, and he’s probably fitter than most of them. But they’re not going to let a P3 go and fight.’
Rose and Jenny looked at each other.
‘Our boys probably won’t be fighting again,’ said Jenny. ‘They’ve only just come back so they’re not supposed to go out there for another two years. And by that time it’ll all have wound down in Afghanistan.’
Leanne was munching chips non-stop. Her hand was on a continuous loop between the bag and her mouth. ‘Yeah, well, they’re all hoping they’ll go back, aren’t they? And they’re soon on spearhead.’
Rose and Jenny looked at each other again. It was one of the most bruising aspects of the men’s return: that within a few weeks they were restless to go back.
‘Spearhead doesn’t mean a thing,’ said Rose. ‘No one ever gets called back out when they’re on spearhead.’
