by McNab, Andy
‘Jen, tell me how you’re feeling,’ he said at last.
Her sobs eased a bit.
‘Fucking awful. I told them to induce me just to get it over with but they thought I could go a little bit longer and every bit longer I go on is better for the baby.’
‘But you’re important too.’
‘Jenny isn’t here any more. She’s been replaced by a big swollen-up monster who can’t move her feet or her hands and whose head’s going to explode any minute.’
‘Oh, shit, I wish I was with you.’ He had a horrible feeling that was all he ever said to her these days.
She was crying again now: ‘And there was a story on the news tonight about some soldiers who shot some poor little Afghan children and . . .’ Pause for sobs. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’
‘No, love. We give them sweets.’
‘Oh. That’s OK then.’
‘They probably got shot because some poor little Taliban fighters were using them as human shields.’
But she was crying again now.
‘Look, I can’t help it, Dave. People get emotional before they have babies. And I know you hate it when I’m like this and I know you want me to be strong and sensible and make it all right that you’re away but just now it’s not all right, Dave, it’s not, not, not fucking all right!’
Dave suspected that Jenny was sharing this one not just with him but with Nurse Prim and an entire ward of large-bellied women, all nodding in agreement.
‘You’ve got to leave the army! You’ve got to. Because it’s bloody awful being looked after by your mum like all the girls who don’t know who the father is. The family men should be here with their families.’
‘Stop, Jen. You know I love you and you know I want to be there. But I can’t. And I have to go away for a few days. So I won’t be able to phone. I feel terrible about it. You know what this is doing to me.’
‘You! You! What do you think it’s doing to me? You never even ring!’
‘I do but they don’t pick up the phone on your ward or they pick up and then cut me off. I do my best.’
Like shattered glass, she was breaking into sobs again.
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Dave. ‘If thinking about someone can help and caring about someone can help, then that’s what I’m doing, OK? Thinking about you and loving you and Vicky and the baby and caring about you. But I won’t be able to call you. So please, please try to calm down and relax just for me so you don’t have pre-eclampsia any more and you can go home. Don’t for God’s sake have the baby when I can’t even speak to you.’
Now she was inconsolable. He held the phone away from his ear while she cried and cried. His Jenny, his strong, determined Jenny, was awash with hormones and at the mercy of her blood pressure. She had turned into this shouting, sobbing wreck.
‘Can I talk to the doctor? Or even that nurse?’ he asked her. But she could not hear him over her tears.
When the call ended he thought of putting in a request for compassionate leave. It might even be granted. But that would mean deserting his men out here, and deserting them just before a dangerous five-day operation. It would be like a snake shedding a skin. He didn’t want to do it.
‘Er . . . Sarge . . .’ said a small voice.
Dave opened his eyes. He realized he had been gripping the phone as though it was about to run away. He saw Mal standing there, waiting for him.
‘Sorry, Bilaal,’ he said. ‘You want the phone?’
‘Nah, Swift’s next . . .’
Mal gestured into the well of darkness where Swift stood, barely perceptible.
‘Here,’ said Dave. ‘I’ve finished now.’
‘Thanks, Sarge,’ said Swift, taking the phone and stealing off into the night with it. Everyone had a favoured private phone spot, somewhere the signal was strong enough and he could fool himself he was alone. Then at the end of the call there would invariably be someone waiting silently to take it. You could never be alone in an FOB.
Dave expected Mal to evaporate just as Swift had, but instead he stayed nearby.
‘What’s up with you, Mal?’ asked Dave. ‘1 Section don’t even have to get up yet. Can’t you sleep?’
‘No,’ said Mal.
Dave felt weary. Right now he needed to walk through the quiet night and think about Jenny and instead he would have to talk to Bilaal.
‘Want to help me carry ammo and talk?’
‘Yeah, great, Sarge, good.’ Mal sounded nervous. He was a skinny lad with a lot of nervous energy. Whenever a battle was starting Dave could hear Mal clearing his throat over and over again. He often giggled as he fired. And if he had told Mal either of these things he would be amazed.
Dave wondered if Mal was going to start talking about some woman problem. Whenever 1 Section stopped for a brew, Mal would be talking about women. He was obsessed, as though he had only just discovered their existence.
‘Sarge, you know I’m a Moslem?’
Dave was so surprised that he stopped. This was already not sounding like the kind of conversation you have loading ammunition. ‘Well . . . yes. But I don’t see you dropping down on your knees every time you hear the call to prayer.’
‘I was brought up Moslem. We were never, you know, devout. But I’ve always been on a Friday.’
‘To the mosque?’
‘Well, yeah, but, I mean, I’m normal too. After the mosque, I go out clubbing.’
‘Normal means lots of different things to lots of different people.’ Dave was curious to know where this conversation was leading. He realized he preferred to talk to one of his men about something that was bothering him than think about his phone call to Jenny. Because no matter how important what was going on at home, it was so far away that you could always find something much nearer to eclipse it.
‘This Moslem thing, I sort of hide it, know what I mean?’ asked Mal, offering Dave a cigarette and lighting one himself.
For a moment Mal’s face, brown and lean, wrapped around his cigarette, was illuminated. Then he inhaled and there was only the red tip at the end, glowing in the dark.
‘So you feel you have to hide it?’ asked Dave.
‘Yeah. Because we’re fighting a bunch of ragheads, right? And I don’t want people thinking I’m one of them. And anyway, I’m not. I’m not like them.’
‘No. Because they’re trying to take over this country and we’re trying to stop them,’ said Dave.
‘Yeah, that’s it. All I’ve got in common is I know a bit of the Quran. And we look a bit the same.’
‘So what’s up then, Mal? Any of the lads got a problem with you being a Moslem?’
‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s at home, Sarge.’
‘At home?’
‘See, there are a lot of Moslems where we live and they see me drinking and clubbing and chasing women and they don’t think nothing about it. But then they hear I’m out in Afghanistan fighting other Moslems. And they don’t like that.’
‘This isn’t a war against Islam.’
‘Well, the way they see it, Islam’s got a war against the infidel. And I’m fighting on the wrong side, see.’
Dave was asking himself why Mal was telling him this now, just before their departure.
‘Are you worried your family could suffer because you’re out here?’
‘They already are suffering, Sarge. See, they haven’t been telling me because they didn’t want to worry me but then my sister sent a bluey the other day. And I want to go home and sort the bastards out. I want to sort them out a lot more than I want to see off the Taliban.’
‘What exactly’s happened?’
‘My sisters get spat at in the street. My brothers drive these taxis, see, and someone keeps trying to torch them. And my mum and dad were just sitting down to a nice meal and some fucking bastard put a flaming rag through the letterbox. They soaked it in petrol and set light to it and then stuffed it into my mum’s hallway that she’s kept so nice all these years.’
‘
Shit,’ said Dave. ‘That’s a criminal offence. I hope they called the police.’
‘The police have done fuck all! They take notes and they don’t do nothing. They told my dad they don’t want to inflame community tensions. Inflame. That’s the word they used. And what my dad should have said was: then the community needs to stop inflaming my fucking hallway. But my dad’s not like that, he’ll just nod his head when people treat him like shit.’
Dave thought for a moment.
‘I’m sorry, Mal. This is terrible.’
‘And it’s all my fucking fault, innit? It’s my fault for joining up.’
‘No!’
‘And my brothers know who’s doing it. People I was at school with, who used to be my friends, they’re the ones!’
It was easy to imagine Mal in the school playground, demanding justice against aggressors, attacking them furiously, standing his ground in his nervous, excited way.
‘Sarge, I want to go home and sort this one out.’
‘You what?’
‘I want to go home. If the police won’t see to those fucking bastards, I’ll have to see to them myself.’ Mal’s eyes were glittering in the dark.
‘Now just a minute . . .’
‘See, I’m the youngest in my family. I’ve got all these brothers and sisters and they’re much older than me, and they get attacked, they keep their heads down. They’re like that Taliban dude we shot. Sitting up in the tree with his weapon wedged there, keeping very quiet hoping we wouldn’t notice his fucking legs dangling in front of our faces? That’s my family! Keep quiet and it’ll go away. But we shot that geezer, didn’t we? Keeping quiet doesn’t do anything! My family don’t know you have to fight people.’
Mal drew breath and Dave was able to interrupt him at last.
‘You came here to fight people. You’re fighting the Taliban in a professional way as part of a disciplined army sent here by a democratic government—’
But Mal would not let him continue.
‘Back home in Wythenshawe, no one knows those words, Sarge! They don’t know about democratic and disciplined and—’
‘You joined the army to fight and that’s what you do out here and that’s what you’re paid for. You’re not paid to take your fights home to Wythenshawe.’
‘Sarge, if I didn’t go to Jackpot today, I could maybe just go home for a week instead, maybe bring my R&R forward and—’
‘And make matters worse there? Mal, I can refer this one up the chain if you want me to. And they might say yes. But it would be a mistake. And they wouldn’t say yes before we take off in the wagons this morning.’
‘But maybe if you ask them now, it could all be agreed by the time we get back.’
‘I will if you want. But take my advice and don’t do it. Your family’s older and wiser than you and they’re dealing with it. You’re here and your job is to be a soldier.’
‘But if I just had a week I could—’
‘We all have troubles we’d like to fly home and sort out. But we have to concentrate on doing our job.’
He could not see Mal’s face clearly.
‘It’s terrible what’s happening to your family. But you can’t do anything from Afghanistan and that’s probably a good thing. If you go back and get into a fight, it won’t help your family and it won’t help you.’
‘I dunno,’ said Mal.
‘You’ll have to come to Jackpot, it’s too late to change that.’
Mal was silent for a long time.
‘Think about it. Let me know if you want me to kick it upstairs. But if you take my advice you’ll let your family handle it back at home and you’ll do what you came here for.’
Dave heard his voice, strong and sure. He should take his own advice. Only a few minutes ago he’d been considering asking for permission to fly home himself. His thoughts reverted to Jenny again. She had probably already calmed down from that angry, emotional phone call and by now she would be regretting it. So her blood pressure would fall. So she wouldn’t have pre-eclampsia any more. And then everything would be OK.
Chapter Forty-nine
EVERYONE, EXCEPT MARTYN, EMILY AND THE ENGINEERS, HATED Jackpot on arrival. One glance at the flimsy defences made the soldiers uneasy.
‘This’ll be good in a mortar attack,’ they said miserably.
The sangars were solid enough, built up on hesco, but the rest of the perimeter was trench and wire with, in places, sandbag protection. The civilian zone was marked by a low wall of sandbags but they, too, had to use the exposed oil drums for toilets. Except for Emily. She had a small, private area with sheeting around it.
‘Can’t I use that too?’ demanded Martyn.
‘No,’ said Emily. ‘This is the Ladies.’
‘I don’t want to take a crap in front of everyone in this camp,’ Martyn complained to the OC.
‘You’ll have to,’ said Major Willingham, ‘unless Emily agrees to share it.’
Otherwise the camp consisted only of a collection of tents and the perimeter wire.
Martyn studied the wire.
‘Nick,’ he said to the OC. ‘Think we could move it about twenty feet to the right? Seems to me that part of our exploration area is just outside the fence.’
The OC said, in a voice that was many degrees lower than the ambient air temperature: ‘No, Martyn.’
Martyn burst out laughing.
‘Just kiddin’ you, Nick!’
The OC did not smile.
The camp sat at the base of the hills which swept up to the huge, looming purple mountains. The hills were to the north and so gave it no protection from the desert sun, which was even more merciless here than at the FOB. A constant hot wind created dust devils, tiny tornados that span purposefully across the desert, through the wire and straight into the camp. In the distance, the Early Rocks rose out of the flat plain like weird and lonely skyscrapers.
The wind distributed the sand everywhere. It got into people’s clothes, their tea, their ration packs, their boots, their ears.
Dave and Sgt Somers of 2 Platoon did not keep their men on boil-in-the-bag; they had resolved that every day they would boost morale by cooking something from the ration packs. Dave liked to think he could turn virtually any ration pack into a presentable meal: he’d trained as a cook when he first left school, before he’d been seduced by the army recruitment ads. And he had persuaded Masud to let him take some fresh food and a few spices from the kitchen to Jackpot.
But the men’s reaction to his first concoction was unenthusiastic.
‘Delicious, Sarge,’ they said, digging their plastic spoons into his stew. ‘Tastes of sand.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Dave.
‘No, Sarge,’ said Finn. ‘Sand. That’s better than shit.’
‘I can sense that you’ve attempted to include a subtle blend of herbs and spices,’ Boss Weeks told Dave. ‘But I’m sorry to tell you that the predominant taste is definitely sand.’
‘If we had to stay here and eat sand for a long time,’ said the OC, who had heard Dave was a good cook and so was eating with 1 Platoon, ‘our teeth would be ground down to almost nothing. That’s precisely what happened to the Native Americans. Ancient skulls show that, by the end of their lives, desert dwellers had no teeth left.’
The men looked at him miserably.
‘We could just swallow without chewing,’ suggested Jamie. ‘That way we’d fuck up our intestines but we’d keep our teeth.’
Dave laughed at that. It was relieved laughter because this was the first time he’d heard Jamie speak since they’d left Sin City. He walked around looking so miserable that his eyebrows were knitted together. It could only be something to do with Agnieszka.
The soldiers were soon bored. All they could do was keep watch and stare in disbelief at the wild enthusiasm of the engineers for this desolate and empty place. Even Emily stalked around the camp in her sensible shoes, rubbing her hands and smiling happily.
‘I told you. This is R&R f
or us, while the civvies do a bit of work for once,’ said Finn, dealing another hand of cards to a group of lads from 2 Platoon, who he assured Dave just played for cigarettes.
Angus preferred to be busy. He volunteered for any job going, helped the engineers carry their kit and did other people’s stag for them while they slept or played cards.
