by Andy McNab
She nodded and blotted the tissue over her damp face once more.
‘And one other thing,’ said Smi. ‘You’ve probably noticed. Booze doesn’t help.’
When she found Steve, it seemed to Leanne that he was more relaxed than he had been for a long time. He kissed her fondly. She hugged him for longer than he expected. Then, after all the noisy farewells, they got into the silent car. They were alone together.
Until they reached the motorway they said nothing. Steve was the first to speak.
‘I’m having a week off,’ he told her.
‘Good. Then what?’
‘I have to phone Welfare.’
‘What will they do? Visit us?’
‘No, I have to phone them about a job.’
‘In Welfare?’ She tried not to sound surprised. One gram too much surprise and the scales could tip dangerously towards fury.
‘Yeah, they think I’ve got a lot to offer other wounded soldiers and their families.’
‘Oh!’ Careful. Not too enthusiastic. Not too astonished. ‘Well, I’ll bet you do,’ she said.
‘Just part-time initially.’
‘To see if they like you?’
‘Yeah, and to see if I like Welfare.’
‘Good! Should be interesting. You could really make a difference there.’
She thought she had got that just about right: she had sounded interested without going overboard. She sneaked a glance at his face and was relieved to see his features were still even and relaxed.
They drove on in silence, Leanne occasionally breaking it to talk about the twins or about the nursery or about the bakery. He listened to her but asked no questions.
‘Adi’s been fantastic about taking the boys. Considering she quite often has Jenny’s kids there too,’ she said.
He gave a snort of derision.
‘So the cow can spend time with General Coward!’
Leanne wished she could rewind the conversation and erase the mention of Jenny. Steve’s face was darkening and his voice had a dangerous undertone which threatened anger.
‘So she can work,’ she said soothingly. She agreed with Steve, but she didn’t want to go there if it made him angry.
‘Jenny Henley’s cheating on her husband and everyone in camp knows it,’ he said.
‘What makes you so sure of that?’ demanded Leanne evenly, uncomfortably aware that she had made a contribution to camp knowledge on this subject.
‘Si Curtis. He phoned me the other night. What a slag! She’s been seen out all over the place with her general and apparently she dumped the baby with Adi for hours the other day because she was going out to lunch with him.’
Shit! Leanne took her foot off the accelerator for a moment with the realization that she herself had given Tiff Curtis that information.
‘I can tell you what they were having for lunch,’ said Steve, his voice full of implication. She knew he was spiralling into anger and she wanted to stop him. Only she didn’t know how.
She tried: ‘It’s none of our business.’ But this just angered him more.
‘Of course it’s our fucking business! Dave’s been a good mate to me. The best. They’re having a rough time out in theatre and what’s she doing to support him? Bonking half of fucking Wiltshire, that’s what.’
‘Calm down,’ said Leanne. She knew it was a stupid thing to say before she had even opened her mouth. It was like lighting a touch paper.
‘Leanne, I will not fucking calm down. Jenny Henley’s cheating on my mate. I’ve never really liked her. I only got on with her for Dave’s sake. I always thought she was a snotty bitch.’
‘Stop it, Steve.’
‘Look at how the camp nursery isn’t good enough for her kids. Look at the way she was all over the cameras at Martyn Robertson’s party. Couldn’t keep away from them in that million-dollar dress she got poor old Dave to buy her. It was embarrassing. He was embarrassed, I could tell.’
Her voice was smooth-calm. Icy-calm. ‘That’s not true.’
‘She’s a slag, and you can’t deny it,’ said Steve, more quietly. It was all too familiar to Leanne: after the anger came the withdrawal.
‘I hardly speak to her these days,’ said Leanne.
His voice was a near-whisper now. ‘I won’t be speaking to her at all.’
They drove on in silence, Leanne thinking of Smi, the man who could find a smile and a kind word for everyone. Smi had probably always been that way. And, underneath, maybe Steve had always been like this. So he was unlikely to change.
She sighed. At least the sun had arrived extra early this year. The car was full of light and the steering wheel was hot to touch. Thank God. It meant Steve would be able to spend plenty of time out of the house.
Chapter Twenty-three
‘DOES IT USUALLY rain like this here?’ the men asked their Ana counterparts when they got back from the poppy fields.
Jamal, the interpreter, said: ‘It’s spring. Rain can fall in spring.’
‘When does it stop?’
Jamal shrugged. His features closed up the way they so often did. Dave always watched his face carefully, because he could never resolve the question: Can I trust this man? Jamal frequently threw sidelong glances at Dave, as if he knew that Dave was unsure of him. Even if they only discussed the weather, suspicion flared up between them.
‘All I know,’ said Jamal, ‘is that now it rains.’
The rain did not stop in the night. The morning skies were a thick, crusty grey and large drops still fell at an even rate. They went on patrol and the people they passed peered out at them from inside damp clothes. In the town, water ran in rivers down the streets. It was mixed with raw sewage.
‘This smell makes Binman puke, right, Binman?’ said Angry as they tried to wade along the main street.
‘Right,’ said Binman. ‘I just want to get back to our nice clean cave.’
‘Yeah, at least we’re not stepping over turds there,’ said Slindon.
‘’Cept you’re a human turd, Blue Balls,’ Angus told him.
Streaky Bacon looked miserable: ‘Chemicals, shit – this is the smelliest tour ever.’
Finn asked: ‘How does Wolverhampton smell, then, Streaks?’
‘Wolverhampton smells of weed. And aftershave. Wolverhampton smells nice,’ Streaky told him nostalgically.
‘What does Chelsea smell of, Tiny?’ Finn asked.
‘Money,’ said Tiny Hemmings. ‘I think they mint it there.’
Everyone thought the rain must stop that night but it did not, nor the next.
‘Is it going to rain all fucking week?’ they asked Jamal.
‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘Maybe all month.’
They stared at him in disbelief. ‘Without stopping?’
Jamal shrugged.
The walls of the caves were soon shiny. Water dripped through the rock on to men as they slept. They were always hanging kit out to dry but nothing ever did. They were sent to the poppy fields again and the vehicles slipped over the tracks. When they arrived they found the usually powdery Afghan soil had turned to solid, sticky clay. Tractors got stuck as they tried to cross the drainage ditches. The drivers spent less time spraying and more time pulling each other out of the mud. An armoured group arrived to tow the tractors with Scimitars. The soldiers became bored and frustrated.
‘Did we join the fucking Land Army?’ they asked.
‘Do we want to be, like, farmers?’
‘Are we here to fight or what?’
All spraying was halted. At the FOB they were told to stand by for humanitarian work, since the rain was causing mudslides which were endangering some mountain villages.
‘Rescuing Taliban fighters, that’ll make a nice change from killing them,’ the lads said.
Chalfont-Price was not amused.
‘Apparently families and their goats are in considerable distress and we will be winning hearts and minds by helping,’ he told his men. ‘The rain has given us a good opportunity
to show the caring face of the British Army.’
His words were greeted with silence. There was only one dry place in the FOB, a small cave in such solid rock that no water penetrated and the floor remained dusty. Chalfont-Price and a couple of other officers occupied it. Even Major Willingham cast jealous glances at the dry cave, although he stopped short of demanding it for his own use.
‘Will the boss be showing the caring face of the British Army to Afghan goats, then?’ Dave heard someone say in an undertone.
There was a muttered reply: ‘No fucking way, he’ll be staying in his cave and sending us to do it.’
Among themselves the lads agreed that doing humanitarian work in the floods would be more interesting than the wet, quiet patrols through the town. The rain had sent the Taliban indoors and now there was almost no action when they left the FOB. Men complained of boredom.
‘This weather’s reminding me of Wiltshire. It’s making me think of being back in camp with Adi and the kids, watching TV with the rain banging against the windows,’ said Sol. And that was all it took to make everyone think of home. Once the thinking and talking had begun, they could not stop.
‘I’m even feeling nostalgic for Tesco,’ said Danny Jones.
‘Me too! Fucking FOB Tesco!’ said Gerry McKinley.
‘Steady on, lads,’ Dave told them.
‘When it rains like this on Saturdays, I get up, go for a run, get back into bed with my bird and stay there all day,’ Jonas said.
‘You can’t do that once you have kids,’ Andy Kirk told him.
‘No way. You’re lucky if you get a run, let alone a shag,’ Gerry McKinley said.
‘I’m not never having kids,’ said Jonas. ‘Not if they get in the way of my sex life.’
The married men exchanged wry glances but said nothing.
They were told that Major Willingham wanted to speak to them all. The gravity in the 2 i/c’s tone made Dave certain there was some big announcement coming. It might be about humanitarian aid to flood victims. Or maybe the OC would tell them they were going home to Wiltshire. Home. It was a while since he had communicated with the place. Home was a new, strange, bleak landscape, full of emotional complexities he would have to resolve and, at its centre, a woman he seemed not to know any more.
The lads were ready for what the OC was going to say.
‘We’re going home! That’s what it is, we’re going home!’ they said. There was a buzz of excitement as they gathered for prayers. Dave’s gut twisted quietly inside him.
The men who couldn’t fit under the rock, which was most of them, tried to stand under the tarpaulin they had rigged up outside. The rain seemed to drip right through it. Dave remembered the way Slindon had said he would just open his mouth in Brecon to save carrying water and how he had bawled Slindon out, saying it never rained in Afghanistan. Christ. Slindon being right was almost as irritating as Chalfont-Prick being dry.
Major Willingham entered the cave and, apart from the steady drip of water on all sides, there was complete silence, the silence of anticipation, the silence of men who waited for good news.
‘First, although we have been standing by to aid the flood victims, I understand that the Paras have the situation under control and our services won’t be required,’ he announced. ‘Next, I think you will all be relieved to hear that we are scheduled to leave FOB Carlsbad by the end of the week.’
A cheer went up but the OC did not smile reassuringly.
‘We will be saying goodbye to our friends in the ANA, who will remain here when B Company replaces us. We will initially be spending a couple of days at Bastion, where you will be glad to hear there is no rain. And I understand that there has been very little rain at our next destination.’
There was a buzz of anticipation.
‘So that would be Wiltshire, then, sir?’ shouted someone. Dave didn’t need to look to know who.
‘No, Lance Corporal,’ said Major Willingham, shaking his head at Finny. ‘No, it would not.’
A new silence fell. Its texture was different. It contained both disappointment and apprehension. If the good news was the weather forecast, what was the bad news?
‘We’ll remain at Bastion for a couple of days, which will give us all a chance to dry off, phone home, take a hot shower. Then we’ll be moving to FOB Nevada.’
The men waited. They had heard of Forward Operating Base Nevada but no one knew much about it.
‘As the name suggests, it is currently occupied by the Americans. They, however, will be moving north with the sprayers on eradication duty. The FOB is on the edge of Mas’qada, a town at the heart of Taliban opium operations. The Americans have succeeded in driving back the Taliban from Mas’qada and they are very anxious not to lose the ground they have taken while they concern themselves with the rest of the poppy crop. There are a number of patrol bases within a twenty-five-kilometre radius of the FOB and we will also be expected to hold these. At times the Taliban have shown a determination to win the area back and it is possible we will come under considerable pressure. Alternatively, the Taliban may concentrate their efforts further north in order to preserve what is left of their crop. We will, of course, be joined at the FOB by the ANA but due to a manpower shortage this will not be for two weeks.’
When the major asked for questions there was a long pause. Sol coughed and then spoke: ‘Sir, we were originally told to expect a two-month tour. We’ve been here a lot longer than that now. Do you have any idea how long …?’
Every head craned towards the OC for his answer. Major Willingham’s mouth seemed to snap shut as if it was on a hinge.
‘No, Corporal, I don’t.’
Jenny dropped Vicky at nursery with some labelled sunblock and a sun hat. Then she drove on to Tinnington, a route she had come to love. Bluebells lined the woodland floors she passed like a startling blue carpet and the bright light made curling shadows beneath the branches. Overhead, the leaves had the special freshness of the very young.
‘I love the trees at this time of year,’ she told Eugene when she was at her desk. ‘I’ve never spent so much time in the country.’
Eugene, sitting in front of a pile of hand-written pages, smiled. ‘Fiona used to say that the newly unfolded leaves were the colour of fresh bank notes.’
Jenny’s face fell. ‘Fiona did seem to think a lot about money.’
‘Sorry. I keep promising not to mention her again.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Anyway, soon I’ll be so busy that I won’t have time to think about the divorce. Which means that you’ll be busy too, I’m afraid. After various questions were asked in the House of Commons the Government has moved our deadline for the report forward. Brace yourself. It has to be finished by Monday morning.’
Jenny had been filing while they spoke but now she paused.
‘It’s Wednesday today. You can’t mean next Monday.’
‘I do. Well, Sunday night really, because it should be on desks by nine a.m. Monday.’
‘But we haven’t got all the notes and amendments in yet!’
‘Everyone has promised them by tomorrow. Which means that they’ll still be coming in on Sunday. I can guarantee that Robin Douglas-Coombs will be last.’
‘I’ll have to work on Sunday, then.’
Eugene looked away. He looked past her out of the window, past the horses, heads down on the shining grass, towards the newly green woods with their show of bluebells.
‘Jennifer, I don’t like to ask you but I don’t have a choice. Of course you’ll be on double time – and I’ll certainly give you time off in lieu as well. I hope you hadn’t got anything planned that day?’
Jenny saw that the horses’ rugs were off now. They tore greedily at the bright grass, the sunshine bouncing from their smooth coats. No, she didn’t have anything planned. She never did these days. She simply tried to enjoy Sundays with the children, although weekends weren’t much fun without Dave because wherever she went, to town or playgrounds
or the children’s farm park or the indoor play gym, she encountered whole families, not the splinter of a family like hers.
‘I don’t mind working Sunday,’ she said. ‘I don’t much like Sundays.’
‘You could bring the children but of course that might mean we get less work done. And we may have to work into the night.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘You wouldn’t have to come in on Monday, obviously. But knowing how some of these committee members leave everything to the last minute, I’d say late working is a strong possibility.’
Jenny sat down to think.
Eugene watched her. ‘The children could sleep here. Although moving small children to unfamiliar surroundings to sleep can create more problems than it solves.’
‘I’ll try to arrange to leave them at Adi’s for the night.’
He straightened his back and swivelled his chair in an unnatural, embarrassed movement. He said: ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way. But if it’s late and you’re tired, you would be most welcome to stay here. I have at least three spare bedrooms at the moment and they’re all very comfortable.’
Jenny did not want to blush. If there was any way to stop her cheeks from reddening now, she would have paid a lot for it. She bent over her computer, hoping her hair covered her face.
‘Thanks, Eugene.’ She did not look round. ‘If I’m really tired I’ll stay. But I’ll try to get home if I can.’
When she next looked round, he was deep in his work.
At lunchtime, as she switched off the computer and stood up to go, he said: ‘I hope you don’t mind my inviting you to stay. I’m only trying to make life easier for you.’
‘I know, Eugene,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s a kind offer and I may take you up on it.’
He opened his desk drawer and instead of pulling out more pieces of paper or a stapler, he produced a bottle of wine. ‘You were telling me about your friend? How her husband lost a leg and returned to Bastion, then was unlucky enough to be caught in a second explosion?’
