by Andy McNab
When the boss used the word ‘safe’, Dave uncrossed and crossed his arms. Noticing, the young officer turned his small, thickset body aggressively towards Dave.
‘Do you have some sort of problem with that, Sergeant?’ he demanded. ‘Perhaps you’ll share it with us?’
And then there was that silence, the one Dave was learning to recognize, the special silence which fell among the men when he and Chalfont-Price were confronting each other. It wasn’t just that nobody talked. Nobody moved either; maybe they didn’t even breathe. The entire platoon was holding its breath.
Dave looked out of the cave towards the bright daylight. Helmeted heads were silhouetted against it. He saw Doc Holliday, watching him laconically, leaning against a rock. Doc raised his eyebrows. He disliked the boss even more than Dave did.
Dave turned to the men. ‘You heard what the boss said. The Americans have cleared the area. But don’t start thinking you can relax. You can’t. Stay alert and stay sharp. Nothing’s actually safe here.’
Chalfont-Price did not thank Dave before he continued. Instead he left a long pause which said the interruption had been unnecessary.
‘Let me remind you once more. If the tractors come under fire, the vehicles will intercept. At worst, gunners on top can put down suppressing fire, but this is to be kept to a minimum. Men inside vehicles must not dismount and treat this like an operation. The poppy fields are not to become battlefields. Is that clear?’
No one said a word.
‘I repeat. This is simply a protection exercise. Now does everyone understand what we are and are not doing?’ demanded Chalfont-Price. There was a cough. Dave smiled to himself. No orders would be complete without Billy Finn asking a question.
‘Sir, are you saying that we should only put down suppressing fire?’
The boss’s face darkened. Dave had to hand it to the man, Chalfont-Prick could use his eyebrows to maximum effect. His voice, when it came, was suppressing fire itself: ‘That is indeed the intention, Lance Corporal.’
‘Even in an ambush, sir? Even if there’s an ambush, do you want us to stay in the vehicles and not fire back?’
It had taken a while, because they were used to the open and approachable Gordon Weeks, but somehow the new boss had stopped the men asking questions. Sticking your neck out usually got it stamped on, so now people seldom did. Dave suspected that some of the lads found Chalfont-Prick more intimidating than the Taliban. But not Billy Finn. Dave knew he should put the lad in his place but he remained silent. He tried, unsuccessfully, to look disapproving.
The boss couldn’t lower his eyebrows much further but he expanded his chest and there was a small but noticeable rustle of anticipation all over the cave before the men became motionless, waiting for the eruption.
‘I can see,’ growled Chalfont-Price, his voice taut with irritation, ‘that I’ll have to go over everything again as some of you have not been listening.’
He sighed expressively and then spoke slowly and clearly, as though to a child.
‘We have been ordered to put down suppressing fire because the farmers will certainly attempt to protect their illegal crop from the sprayers. However, we know that these poppy fields are in valuable to the Taliban; they are some of the best in the province. We may therefore come under sustained attack, which may go beyond small-arms fire or anything local farmers can manage. There is even the possibility of serious ambush. Naturally, if that occurs, there will be fighting which requires more than suppressive fire. I should have thought that would be obvious, Lance Corporal.’
‘Ah! So then it’s all right for us to get out of the wagons?’
The boss’s eyes flashed angrily and he turned to Dave.
‘Sergeant, could you please deal with this man,’ he snapped.
Dave thought the best way of dealing with Finny was to slap him on the back and buy him a pint.
‘That’s enough, Finny, you’ve made your point,’ he said. He tried to sound tough but knew he hadn’t succeeded.
The boss glared and then synchronized watches before stalking out to join the other officers in their cave. He did not look to right or left. His departure was immediately followed by a pause and then there was an outbreak of voices as the men scrambled to their feet and began to file out of the cave. Some of them gave Finn a thumbs-up or a high-five.
As Billy Finn passed him, Dave raised his eyebrows.
‘Sarge, he sounds good but he talks bollocks,’ muttered Finny.
Dave’s voice was low. ‘Billy Finn, I’m letting you off shit duties for a week for that,’ he said. ‘But be careful.’
Iain Kila strolled up.
‘All right, mate?’
Dave nodded.
‘Have a word?’
Dave followed the sergeant major outside and they found a place to sit under camouflage netting. Kila’s tattoos were covered by the criss-cross of shadow tattoos from the netting.
Kila leaned across the table. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, mate?’
‘Yessir. Why?’
‘Because I was watching you in there and you looked seriously pissed off. Finny was cheeky and you didn’t tell him to wind his neck in, and that’s not like you.’
Dave shrugged. ‘I thought the boss deserved it.’
‘We don’t let our lance corporals grip officers in the British Army, and you know it.’
Dave’s face remained expressionless.
‘Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, Iain. Sorry.’ Probably better not to mention he had actually rewarded Finny.
‘I know why you’re pissed off. We all do,’ said Kila. ‘It’s not just Chalfont-Price.’
Dave felt his heart beat faster and he turned to face the sergeant major.
‘What do you know?’ he asked.
‘Everyone’s talking about it. The women are talking about it back in Wiltshire and they chatter on the phone to their husbands here and the next thing you know the blokes are all talking about it too.’
‘Talking about me.’ This was a statement, not a question, because Dave didn’t want to hear the answer. It came anyway.
‘About your Jenny. People think she’s doing a bit more than typing with this general she works for over at Tinnington. Coward-Hardy.’
Dave’s elbows were on the table. His chin was cupped in one palm. Now he closed his eyes. The gesture could be mistaken for defence against the long, low rays of the sun.
‘Do you want to go home?’ asked Iain Kila.
Dave looked up. A few lobster-coloured men passed carrying oil cans. The land still froze at night but in the day men took their shirts off whenever they could. Dave had handed out sun cream and a few used it. Others just turned red. He made a mental note to talk to them about that again.
His eye ran over the Hesco and beyond it the rocky hillside down which, distantly, a small, brown-skinned boy clambered with a couple of goats.
‘Nah,’ said Dave. ‘I don’t need to go home.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘It wouldn’t be good for the lads if their sergeant sods off,’ said Dave.
‘We’d manage here. We’d call it R and R.’
‘Everyone in camp would know why I was back.’
Dave tried to imagine arriving home in an army car, the whole street peering through their nets at him as he pulled up outside and went in. And for the next week the camp would be studying their every move.
‘Steve Buckle’s going home from Headley Court soon. It would help a lot if you were there.’
‘No, Iain. That’s not a good enough reason for me to go back either. We’ve got Welfare in camp for Steve.’
Kila scrutinized Dave’s face now. Dave, aware that he was being appraised, closed his eyes again.
The sergeant major said: ‘The worst thing is rumours. Rumours can drive you crazy because you think there’s no smoke without fire and you run around looking for the fire. But sometimes there is no fire. People are just talking shit.’
‘Jenny adm
its it,’ Dave told him.
The sergeant major sat upright and wrinkled his brow. He was the only man in the FOB who stayed clean-shaven, and that included his head. ‘Jenny? Admits she’s having an affair?’
‘Jenny admits that she sees this man because she works for him. She admits that he’s picked the kids up once when she was working late. She admits that they’ve been out to the theme park with the kids because they got some special army tickets or something and he took his grandchild. But she says she’s not having an affair.’
‘Christ,’ said Kila. ‘It’s sounding like a fucking affair to me.’
Dave was silent. In the last few weeks he had been finding he had less and less to say. And the less he said, the more other people talked. About him. And Jenny.
Finally he spoke. ‘I trust her.’
Kila raised his eyebrows. ‘I hope you’re right.’
‘Until now, I’d have said we’re a happily married couple.’
Doc Holliday appeared in time to hear Dave’s words. He slumped down beside them, got out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply and slowly. Then he said: ‘I used to be happily married and look at me now.’
Dave looked at him. He saw a stocky, hairy individual blowing smoke rings.
‘I’m looking. What am I supposed to see?’
‘A single bloke.’
‘Ah. You’re telling me that you were happily married but it didn’t last.’
Holliday shrugged. ‘Face it, mate, none of it lasts.’
Kila assumed the same world-weary expression. ‘One of the things I’ve learned about women is, the more you think you can trust them, the more you can’t. I’m sorry, Dave. But it’s true. There are women I would have put my hand on the Good Book for and said: Aye, she’s faithful. Well, those are always the very ones who’ve let me down.’
Dave remained silent. Doc Holliday blew perfect smoke rings into the still Afghan air. Lounging about outside a cave was a group of men with nothing to do. Dave could hear that they were talking about women too, but in a different way. An unmarried man sort of a way, their voices full of vigour and humour.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ Iain Kila persisted, ‘about my first wife. Long ago. She was such a meek, pretty, wee thing and butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And she was a good wife too, or so I thought. Every man in the mess took me aside and tried to tell me she was working her way through the entire regiment and I didn’t believe them. And when she ran off with a colour sergeant I was knocked for six. I was distraught. I didn’t go out for nearly a year. And it took a few more years for me to learn all she’d been doing when we were married and who she’d been doing it with. And even now, as I sit here, it’s unbelievable to me.’
Doc Holliday’s brown eyes swivelled around to Kila.
‘Iain, isn’t it your job to persuade him everything’s all right at home?’
Kila smiled. ‘I’m his mate too.’
Dave said: ‘Not all women are like that wife of yours, you know. There are some women you can trust.’
Doc drew on his cigarette. ‘If you trust her, why is she making you so fucking miserable, Dave?’
Dave sighed in answer.
‘I often used to think,’ said Kila, squinting into the sun, musing out loud, ‘that if I’d listened to the blokes who were trying to tell me about my wife, if I’d confronted her and come on a bit heavy and kept her in line, we could still be married today.’
‘Nah,’ said Holliday. ‘A woman like that would carry on, only she’d carry on in secret.’
Dave squirmed. He said: ‘The thing is, Jenny’s not like that.’
‘The only reason I might agree with you,’ continued Kila, ‘is that they’re so public about it. He calls at your house, he picks up your kids from the corporal’s wife, they go to some theme park …’
‘Yeah, that’s not furtive,’ said Doc.
Dave couldn’t imagine Jenny being furtive. He couldn’t imagine her being anything but his wife. Except that recently he had tried to stop imagining her at all because whenever the idea of her appeared inside his head he felt angry and sad.
The sergeant major leaned forward and said in an undertone: ‘Between you and me, I don’t think we’ll be here for much longer. The sprayers are due tomorrow; I reckon we should soon be home after that. And then you can sort out this General Coward-Hardy bastard. He ran away at Chalee and a lot of people despise him for it and I reckon that’s when he left the army. But running away from the Taliban’s one thing; having an affair with a bloke’s wife while he’s away fighting is even more fucking cowardly. So when you get back, you go to his posh house and punch him on the nose. And tell him to stay away from men’s wives while they’re in theatre.’
Jenny had given the girls their tea but they showed no sign of going to sleep. She ran upstairs to the drawer where she hid the money to pay Adi for childcare. Then she put the children in the buggy and took them to the park, hoping some friendly mothers would be there. They weren’t. Only Sharon Kirk, who was just pushing her buggy smartly away. She gave Jenny a peremptory wave without stopping.
When they had played enough Post Offices, Jenny steered towards Adi’s to pay her. At least Adi was always welcoming. And then, as soon as the girls were asleep, she would put them to bed and sort out the mess at home. It had been that way since she started working. There was less time to get things done and the children had become more demanding when they were with her. Suddenly there were always piles of laundry and washing up. Sometimes when she got home from Eugene’s she found dirty nappies which had been left on the changing table as she rushed out in the morning.
‘Thank you, darling!’ said Adi, as Jenny handed over the cash. ‘You come in and have a cup of tea.’
Jenny went inside gratefully, only to find the Buckle twins on the rampage.
‘Leanne’ll be here soon for them,’ said Adi. ‘She had a staff meeting after work at the bakery.’
Leanne was always busy these days. Dashing off to work, up the motorway to see Steve, to the camp nursery, to the supermarket. Jenny barely saw her, and if their paths did cross as they picked up their children from Adi’s house, Leanne was invariably just rushing out.
‘You know what I’m saving up for?’ demanded Adi as she made the tea.
‘A new car?’
‘I need one of those too. And that’s what Sol thinks I’m buying with the money. But he’s wrong. It’s a big secret and a big surprise. I know you can keep a secret.’
Adi poured the tea. Jenny waited.
‘A trip home to Fiji!’
‘Oh Ads, what a great surprise for Sol.’
‘You know what I’m going to do when he gets off that bus in the square at last? I’m not going to be holding a Welcome Home banner. I’m going to be holding the family’s air tickets!’
‘That’s lovely, Adi.’
‘So you girls can do all the overtime you want. You’re buying me my tickets home. I’m thinking of writing to British Airways and telling them that Sol’s a front-line soldier. Maybe they’ll give me a discount …’
Leanne burst in. She was still wearing her blue bakery clothes.
‘Hi Adi, hi Jenn.’ She whistled to her twins. ‘Time to go home, boys!’
Ethan and Joel rushed off, giggling, upstairs.
‘How’s your Steve, darling?’ asked Adi. She and Jenny were sitting on the floor, surrounded by small children.
Leanne’s face drooped suddenly.
‘I dunno. I still can’t get much out of him.’
After Steve had spent just one day at home from Bastion, a car had arrived to take him to Headley Court. He had few physical injuries beyond a small piece of shrapnel, which had now been removed. But the explosion had opened another kind of wound, the sort you couldn’t see and which Steve never admitted was there.
‘Any idea when he’s coming back from Headley Court?’
Leanne shook her head.
‘No, but I’m trying to get in all the overtim
e I can before he does.’
Adi smiled. ‘When do you need me?’
‘Can you do tomorrow morning, Ads?’
‘Certainly. Eight o’clock?’
Leanne nodded, a pleading look in her eye.
‘No problem. Ethan and Joel can have breakfast with us.’
Hearing their names, the twins returned, trying to squeeze between their mother’s legs as she stood in the doorway.
‘Stop that!’ roared Leanne, scooping one up under each arm and holding them horizontally so they looked like tiny warheads. She turned to Jenny. ‘I’ll miss Tiff Curtis’s charity coffee morning tomorrow. Could you stick a quid in the pot from me, Jenny, and I’ll pay you back?’
Jenny looked blank.
‘You must be going!’ said Leanne ‘She’s invited everyone!’
Jenny blushed. Adi was quick: ‘Jenny’s too busy, but I’m going. So I’ll put something in the jar for you, Lee.’
Leanne swung the twins a little to prevent them from reaching round her to pull each other’s hair.
‘General YouTube asking you for overtime again next week?’ she demanded. Her tone was harsh. Jenny’s blush turned from pink to red. She buried her face in the baby’s hair. Jaime snuggled up against her.
‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘Eugene did ask if I could stay on Monday afternoon. The nursery says they can keep Vicks all day …’ She looked at Adi; the same pleading look Leanne had given her. ‘I’ve been trying to get his tax stuff up together for the accountant ever since the tax year ended but we haven’t even done last year yet …’
‘OK, Jenny, no problem,’ said Adi evenly. ‘You want to drop Jaime before nursery on Monday and I’ll keep her all day?’
‘Is that all right?’
‘Of course.’
Leanne was retreating now, roaring her thanks and goodbyes over yells from the kicking boys.
‘I’d better go too,’ said Jenny. She had been kneeling on the floor and as she stood up Vicky tried unsuccessfully to wrap herself around her mother’s arm and then a leg.
‘Come on, Vicks, let Mummy go or she’ll fall over,’ said Jenny. But Vicky did not disentangle herself, so Jenny shuffled forwards to give Adi a hug. For no particular reason.
