by Fiona Field
‘Sorry,’ said Des, grinning at Immi’s rant. ‘I’ll get you a drink to make it up. What’s that?’
‘Red wine.’
Des started to laugh. ‘Red wine? You’re kidding me, right? And did I see you reading when I came in?’ He shot a hand across the table and fished the book off Immi’s knees before she could stop him. He glanced at the title and his eyebrows hit his hairline. ‘Pride and Prejudice? Red wine? Glasses? Come on, Ims, what’s your game?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Des laughed harder. ‘Ims, don’t lie to Uncle Des. Who are you trying to impress?’
‘No one,’ she countered primly. ‘Why shouldn’t I read Pride and… and… whatever,’ she finished lamely. Des turned towards the others in the bar, brandishing the book, but Immi grabbed his arm and hauled it down to his side. ‘Shh, Des. Please.’
Des turned back and put the book on the table. ‘OK, I’ll keep quiet but only if you spill the beans.’
‘OK.’ She took a deep breath. She was beaten, she knew it. ‘It’s Luke, Luke Blake.’
Des made a face of complete disbelief. ‘You fancy Blake?’
Immi shrugged. ‘And? Why not?’ She stared at Des.
‘Because he’s weird, that’s why.’
‘Just because he’s got more brains than your average grunt doesn’t make him weird.’
‘And he’s always got his nose in a book, he doesn’t go out on the lash, he doesn’t get in fights, he doesn’t play Call of Duty…’
‘And your point is?’ said Immi.
‘He’s a soldier, in case you haven’t noticed, Ims. That’s what soldiers do. All of them. Except Blake. That’s why he’s weird.’
‘Well, I disagree,’ said Immi, firmly. ‘I think that makes him a bit more interesting, that’s all.’
Des shook his head. ‘Trust me, Immi, he’s not for you. Stick with guys like me.’ He blew her a kiss. ‘You know you want to really.’
Immi picked up her book and stuffed it back in her bag, drained the last drops of her wine and handed her empty glass to Des. At least if he was going to keep her company she was spared from reading Jane Austen. ‘Now, about that drink you offered me…’
She had to hope that Des would have the good sense, or the good manners, to bugger off if and when Luke did turn up.
‘That’s it, Michelle. Watch the angle of your blades.’ Bas was puttering along in a motor launch in the wake of the double scull that Michelle was rowing in with another female soldier. ‘And drive with your legs. Now, remember to pull your elbows through as you start to extract the oar from the water. Feather the blade, slide forward, catch and drive. Brilliant. Feather, recover, catch, drive.’ Bas repeated the mantra time and time again to keep the two girls in perfect rhythm as they swept along the rowing lake, their sculls dipping in and out of the water with the elegance of a swan in flight, leaving little puddles of ripples at perfectly evenly spaced intervals. ‘You’re doing fabulously,’ he called. ‘Keep it up and keep practising for another k or two while I go and help a couple of the other crews.’
‘He’s a slave driver,’ panted Michelle’s rowing companion, Katie.
Michelle could hear how laboured her breathing was and was heartened by the realisation that Katie was finding this as hard as she was. To take her mind off her thundering heart rate and her aching lungs she gazed across a few yards of water to Bas’s boat and fantasised, for a moment, about being seduced by him. God, what would it be like to feel his mouth on hers?
‘Hey,’ shouted Katie, a second before one of Michelle’s sculls clattered into her partner’s. The little boat lurched dangerously as Michelle almost overbalanced. ‘Watch it!’ shrieked Katie, afraid they were both going to end up in the icy water. They both let go of their sculls and clutched the sides of the tiny craft until the violent rocking settled and they recovered their equilibrium.
‘Sorry,’ puffed Michelle, half-collapsing with exhaustion. ‘I don’t know what happened there.’ She heaved in another lungful of air. ‘Lost my concentration for a second.’ She was glad that she was in the bow and thus Katie couldn’t see her face. Mind you, she thought, Katie would be hard pressed to spot a flush caused by embarrassment given that she knew she was sweating like the proverbial pig from all this thundering up and down Eton Dorney Lake. Rowing might look almost effortless if you were watching it but the reality of being a participant was somewhat different. The muscles in her legs were trembling with fatigue and her shoulders and upper arms were burning.
‘Let’s take a breather for a minute,’ gasped Michelle, slumping forward over her oars.
‘Good shout… A couple of minutes… and we can… go again.’ Katie’s words came out in groups of two or three between heavy breaths.
The boat lay still on the water as the two girls recovered, but after about thirty seconds the light breeze began to chill them down.
Michelle shivered. ‘Let’s go before we freeze,’ she said. ‘But let’s take it steady; concentrate on technique, not speed.’
They pushed their hands forward so their blades were in the water as close to the bow of the boat as they could get them, their knees hauled up against their chests, then Katie, as stroke, said, ‘And drive…’
They pulled on the oars, their sliding seats rolling backwards as their feet pushed as hard as possible against a metal plate, and the boat shot forward. Michelle followed Katie’s movements as closely as she could, extracting and feathering her blades in unison with her team mate.
‘And drive,’ called Katie again. The pace was slower than when Bas had been spurring them on, but Michelle reckoned their style was tidier.
They completed another kilometre along the lake and wound up back at the boathouse end feeling completely knackered.
Bas was standing on the pontoon ready to greet them as they pushed their oars onto the jetty and began to climb shakily out of the little craft, which rocked wildly.
‘Here,’ said Bas, leaning down and holding out his hand to Michelle.
She took it and felt a bolt of something powerful – electricity? Lust? Animal magnetism? – course right through her. Involuntarily, she glanced up at his face; had he felt it too? Given the way he was staring at her with wide, dark-eyed intensity, she was sure he had. She thought of the Michelangelo painting in the Sistine Chapel where God’s finger points at Adam’s and brings him to life, and suddenly understood how Adam must have felt at that moment. Bloody hell… she felt rocked to the core.
‘How are you settling in?’ asked Jenna as she held out a gown for Sam to slip on.
‘Yeah, fine, I suppose.’
‘Dan says you had a bit of an accident the other day. Wound up in the medical centre.’
Sam nodded and touched her head. ‘Yeah, and I’ve still got a bloody great bruise. Just here…’ she indicated the spot ‘…so if you could go carefully round it, I’d be grateful.’
Very gently Jenna parted Sam’s hair and had a look at the injury. ‘Nasty.’
‘Luckily, I only got a really mild bout of concussion. I was fighting fit again in a few hours.’
‘Lucky you indeed. Mind you, you’d have been even luckier if you hadn’t been injured in the first place.’ Sam couldn’t fault Jenna’s logic. ‘So, what do you want done?’
Sam explained she wanted a good trim, ‘so it lasts for a couple of months.’
Jenna got busy with the shampoo, being very gentle around the bruised area, as she chatted to Sam about this and that – the weather, holidays, the usual hairdresser to client chit-chat. Then, ‘So what’s it like, being the only woman in the mess?’
‘It’s OK, I’m finding my feet and they’re mostly pretty friendly. I think they’re working it out that I don’t faint if I overhear the odd swear word or dirty joke.’
Jenna chuckled. ‘You don’t? Ooh, I am shocked! Talk about letting the side down.’
‘Exactly. No, to be honest, I’m finding it tougher at the LAD.’
‘Really?�
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Sam nodded. ‘Don’t repeat this, but I don’t think the ASM likes me.’
‘Oh, him. I wouldn’t worry about Graham Williams. He and your predecessor, Ian Abbott, went way back. Abbott was commissioned from the ranks and I think he and Williams knew each other from apprentice college. Or that’s what I heard. There’s no way he’s going to like anyone who follows on from his best buddy.’
‘Honest?’
‘Cross my heart. I mean, it probably doesn’t help that you’re a woman, but that’s blokes in the army for you. I really don’t think it’s personal.’
Sam snorted. Indeed. The army might be outwardly all about equal opportunities but there was still a lot of casual sexism amongst some of its male soldiers.
Jenna finished rinsing out the first application of shampoo and began the second wash.
‘Jenna?’ said Sam.
‘Yes.’
‘What do you know about Corporal Blake?’
Jenna’s hand stilled as she considered the question, then, after a few seconds, she said, ‘Apart from him being odd, you mean?’
Sam nodded her head and felt water trickle down the back of her neck and under her T-shirt. Odd. That was the adjective everyone used. ‘Yes, apart from that.’
‘I met him at the LAD summer barbecue a few months ago. Apart from the fact he’s got a bloody great plum in his mouth I thought he was nice – the weather was fuck-awful and he gave me his jacket. And I could see the goose-bumps all over his arms, so he must have been freezing his knackers off, but he wouldn’t take it back.’
‘The perfect gentleman,’ said Sam wryly.
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ said Jenna, starting to rinse the suds out a second time.
No, there wasn’t, thought Sam. She remembered, despite his apparent irritation at being asked to look after her following her accident, he had been pretty solicitous. Well, once he’d got over being told to put his shirt back on.
‘Anyway, for all his brains and superiority and oddness, I reckon he’s got a kind heart in there somewhere.’
Maybe, thought Sam, but if there was, it was bloody deeply buried. Whenever she looked at him he seemed to be brooding about something.
Jenna started to towel-dry Sam’s blonde curls. ‘You met many of the wives yet?’
Sam shook her head from inside the confines of the fluffy towel. ‘Not really. Put it this way, at weekends I have observed them from a distance and decided that we probably don’t have that much in common. Of course, my dad was a soldier so I grew up on a patch but I looked at my friends’ mums as just that – mums.’
Jenna laughed. ‘Well, thankfully I’m not a proper army wife. I mean, me and Dan aren’t married for starters and I don’t live in a quarter. I did once and that was enough. Don’t you think the proper variety are all a bit Stepford?’
‘Stepford?’
‘You know, like the thriller, where the wives are like robots, designed to be perfect and help their husbands’ careers. No minds of their own, doing as they’re told, obeying regulations and not rocking the boat.’
Sam laughed, because, looking back at all her friends’ mums and then at the wives of the Sandhurst directing staff, she knew exactly what Jenna meant. ‘You may have a point,’ she agreed drily.
‘You’d like my friend Maddy, though.’ Jenna led Sam back into the kitchen and sat her down on a stool in front of a large mirror on the counter, propped up against the bread bin.
‘Maddy?’
‘I’ve been doing her hair for ages, since before 1 Herts got moved here, when they were at their last barracks. She’s nice.’ Jenna ran a comb through Sam’s hair to get out any tangles. ‘Officer’s wife, got a kid, but don’t let that put you off. She’s not all coochey-coo and baby-talk.’ Jenna started to snip. ‘And she’s been known to have a good bitch about the sort of shit the army flings at you, which is a lot if you’re a wife… or partner. In fact, when I told her I was going to be doing your hair she said I was to give you her number, in case you fancy a bit of female company now and again. Her husband is some sort of athlete; always away training, especially at weekends. I think you’d be doing her a favour too, if I’m honest. Remind me to get you her number before you go.’
Sam thanked Jenna but wasn’t sure about Maddy’s offer. Life as the only female in the mess mightn’t be ideal but she wasn’t convinced Maddy’s motives for friendship were entirely altruistic – was she just after someone to fill in the gap when her husband was away? And, furthermore, Sam wasn’t struck on kids. But even if she took the number, she didn’t have to ring it.
‘Love the hair,’ said James, when Sam returned to the mess later that afternoon.
Sam patted her newly cut curls. ‘I didn’t think men noticed stuff like that,’ she retorted, although she was inwardly pleased with the compliment.
‘Well, we do sometimes.’ James gave her a grin. ‘It’s a bit novel to have a mess member with a hairstyle as opposed to a number two buzz cut.’
‘Anyway, what are you doing back here? I thought you’d gone off to see your folks this weekend.’
‘I did and I have, and now I’m back.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Why, if he had the option to be somewhere else, would he want to come back to the mess early, which, at the weekends, had less life going on in it than a sterile Petri dish. Still, it was his decision. ‘Can’t keep away from the place, is that it?’
‘You mean, the lure of joining the pads for Sunday drinkies and chatting about nappy rash and marks on their carpets was too strong for me to resist?’
Sam giggled. James had absolutely nailed Sunday lunchtime conversation in the mess bar. Which was why Sam tended to stay in her room at weekends and which was also why she hadn’t yet really met any of the married officers’ wives. And that reminded her… she fingered the scrap of paper in her pocket that Jenna had given her.
‘Hey, James, do you know Maddy Fanshaw?’
‘Maddy? Of course I do. Lovely lady and married to Seb Fanshaw. Why do you ask?’
Sam shrugged. ‘We share a hairdresser and she said she thought we’d get on.’
‘You would. There’s nothing not to get on with where Maddy’s concerned. She’s a real star. Funny, pretty… I think half the single officers in the battalion are secretly in love with her.’ James laughed. ‘Maybe some of the married ones too, for all I know. Some of the guys are married to real dragons. I bet they’d swap what they’ve got for Maddy in a heartbeat, if the chance came up.’
‘Are you? In love with her, that is?’
‘No. No, not at all, she’s not really my type.’ He laughed then said, ‘Anyway, Seb’s twice my size and would probably knock down anyone who tried anything on with her at the drop of the proverbial hat.’
‘Well, since you seem to think so highly of her, maybe I’ll give her a ring.’
‘Do that. I’m sure the pair of you would hit it off.’ James smiled at her. Sam began to turn, ready to head to her room.
‘By the way,’ said James. ‘Um…’ He sounded a bit diffident. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy going out to supper tonight? Foolishly I booked out for all meals over the whole weekend so the staff won’t be catering for me tonight. I thought I’d go over to that nice pub – you know, the one on the road to Westbury – for sups. I’d love it if you’d join me, then I won’t look like Billy-No-Mates.’
This was a no-brainer – supper out with James or on her own in a lifeless mess? She didn’t even have to think about it for a second. ‘James, I’d love to. But let’s make it a Dutch treat, eh?’
‘It goes against the grain, but…’ He cocked an ear. ‘Yes, I can definitely hear the sound of my bank manager starting to breathe again. And you’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘No, I’d feel so much more comfortable about it. But if you want to make it a real treat you can drive, then I can have a drink.’
‘Deal!’
‘I’ll see you back here at…’ Sam looked at her watch ‘…half six? Or is that
too early?’
‘Nope, perfect. See you then.’
Sam took the stairs two at a time back to her room, feeling strangely cheerful about the prospect of spending an evening with James. It was nice to have a friend in the mess and especially nice to have a friend who seemed to want to be just that – no other agenda. If it wasn’t for blooming Williams at the LAD she’d swear she’d almost been accepted by the battalion.
10
On hearing the bell, Maddy dragged herself to the front door. So much for being able to do some industrial-grade loafing while Seb was away for the weekend. Somehow, between the household jobs that really couldn’t be avoided, Nathan having a bad night, running out of milk and butter so she’d had to go shopping, and feeling absolutely bloody awful, there’d been no way she’d been able to chill out like she’d hoped. Maybe tomorrow, Sunday, would go more like she’d planned. Behind her, in the sitting room, Nathan was banging a wooden spoon noisily on his toy box, and that wasn’t helping things either, but Nate was happy, which was what mattered. Maddy opened the door and there, on the doorstep, was her husband’s boss’s wife, and good friend, Susie Collins. They’d been neighbours on the last patch, before the move, but Maddy and Susie had both been so busy getting their respective houses straight they hadn’t seen much of each other since arriving in their new location. Despite how crap she felt, Maddy felt a tiny little tweak of pleasure at seeing her old mate. She smiled, albeit weakly.
‘Hello, Susie.’
Susie stared at Maddy, her brow furrowed with worry. ‘Sweetie! You look terrible. Are you all right?’
‘Not really,’ admitted Maddy.
‘What can I do?’ said Susie, briskly. ‘I actually came round to see if you had any spare tea bags and I can see now it was a bloody good job that I ran out and had to make the call. It was obviously meant to be!’ She pushed past Maddy into the house. ‘So what’s the matter? Has the move completely knackered you, have you been overdoing things?’
‘Nothing like that, honest.’
Susie gave her a hard stare. ‘You don’t fool me, Maddy, something’s wrong. You sit down. I’m going to make you a cup of tea – assuming you haven’t run out of tea bags too.’ She saw Nathan begin to crawl towards them from the sitting room. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll see to the baby.’
