Rain

by Barney Campbell

  Only Brennan seemed unaffected. Amazing, Tom thought, given that he had seen him sink half a bottle of vodka in one go at three in the morning. He looked as sober as a maiden aunt. Pretty much the entire battle group had clearly got drunker than skunks the previous night but were now trying to maintain the fiction in front of each other that they were models of temperance.

  The padre wound up his sermon, and afterwards Frenchie got the squadron together and had a photo taken of them all wearing their Father Christmas hats. At Christmas lunch the officers served the boys, as was the regimental tradition. When he and the officers sat down Tom inhaled his turkey and potatoes, welcoming anything to soak up the absinthe still swishing round his guts.

  At 1400 the news came that Op Minimize had been lifted. There had been a KIA down south late on Christmas Eve, and the dead man’s family had now been informed, meaning that people were finally now allowed to phone home. Brennan produced a rota prioritizing the phones: first the fathers, then the marrieds and finally the singles. Tom thought only in passing about how the glee with which the boys ran to the phones would contrast with the scene back in Britain at the home of the KIA that day. He flicked it from his mind.

  There was a bank of five phones each in a little wooden booth with a hessian cloth for token privacy. Brennan monitored call lengths. There was every chance that Minimize could be called again any minute with news from elsewhere in theatre so he religiously limited each one to five minutes. He stood outside the booth and when the soldier went in started a stopwatch he had taped above it. When it hit four minutes he would put his head in and say sympathetically, ‘Sorry, lad, one minute left,’ and allow the boy to wind up the conversation before another was allowed in.

  Tom took his place with the other troop leaders at the back of the queue, happy to kick his heels and to chew the fat with the other boys. Finally Tom’s turn came. He settled into the booth on the grimy white plastic chair, took a few deep breaths and called home. He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Half eleven back home. Would Mum be back from church? The phone rang and rang and then hit the answer machine. His heart sank. He hung up and tried again. On the eighth ring came her voice: ‘Hello, Chamberlain?’ His throat went dry. He couldn’t speak.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  Come on!

  He croaked, ‘Hi, Mum. Happy Christmas.’

  It took a while for her voice to reach him over the line.

  ‘Tom! Tom! How are you! Are you OK? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, I’m fine. We’re all allowed to ring home today. I know I promised not to, but I just decided on the off-chance. I’m fine; don’t worry. I promise you. We’re all fine.’ He thought about Acton and decided not to mention him.

  ‘Tom, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve literally just this minute got back from church. I was going to stay and go to drinks with the vicar afterwards, but I decided to come home and feed Zeppo early for some reason. How funny! What are you doing today? Are you going on patrol?’

  ‘No, Mum; we’re in camp today. It’s been great. We had a carol service and Christmas lunch and everything, and the rest of the day is pretty chilled – nothing planned. And then it’s New Year, then three more weeks, and then that’s me on R & R. I can’t wait! How’s Zeppo? What’s the weather like?’

  ‘He’s well, but he’s getting fat; I spoil him. You’re going to need to take him on some long walks when you’re home.’

  ‘Ha! Poor Zep. Give him some extra turkey today.’

  ‘Hmm, OK. The weather’s so-so – cold and crisp and frosty – but the drive is so slippy. I’ve managed to get a man from the council to come and grit it. How is it with you?’

  ‘Freezing! The nights are about minus ten at the moment. But we’re OK. We’re all OK, Mum. Can’t wait to come home though. And thank you so much for all the parcels.’ He looked at his watch; not long to go. ‘Tell Sam that we had his sloe gin. It was pretty toxic!’

  ‘Will do. It is so good to hear you. Everyone in the village has been watching the news about Afghanistan. Everywhere I go I’m like a celebrity.’

  ‘More free drinks for me the next time I’m back then. Mum, I’d better go in a bit. We’re only allowed five minutes.’

  Brennan put his head around the hessian and whispered, ‘Sorry, sir; one minute left.’

  Tom nodded, and continued to Constance: ‘Ma, we’re about to go into the desert for a bit so I won’t be able to ring for a while. Please still write though. And I will too. Have you been getting my blueys?’

  ‘They’re stuck up on the noticeboard in the kitchen. I’m looking at them right this second. Please keep sending them. It is so good to hear your news. And remember I want photos!’

  ‘I know, Mum, I know.’

  ‘Well you’d better go. I am so pleased you called. This has made my Christmas. I’m off to lunch with Sam and Florence. They’ll be delighted you rang.’

  ‘Say hi to them from me.’ He felt the time slipping away and desperately wanted to stop it and to continue this fragile link for ever. But he had to go.

  ‘Ma, Happy Christmas. And I’ll see you in a month anyway. I can’t wait! Not long.’

  ‘I know, Tom. Take care, darling, will you?’

  ‘Always do, Mum, always do.’ He had to end this. ‘I’ll write, I promise. Great to speak. Bye, Mum.’

  ‘Bye, Tom.’

  They rallied farewells at the end.

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  And then the phone went dead. Tom hung up and walked away from the booth past the remnants of the queue and back to his tent, trying to look brave. He passed Dusty, who paused to speak to him but then noticed Tom’s face and let him go on his way.

  He went into the tent, empty bottles still on the table stinking sweetly. He lay on his camp cot and tried to take everything in, not sure whether his numbness came from either the night before or from the phone call. A helicopter’s downdraught beat against the roof of the tent; absent-mindedly he recognized the sound of a Sea King. Maybe it carried some mail. Music came softly from Clive’s speakers, and he started to lose himself in its calming, cathartic beat. He realized then that he was very tired, and turned over the events of the night before. It seemed so long ago. Because Acton was fine, or at least would live, everyone had slightly forgotten about him. If he had died, and Tom knew just how close that had been, the whole day would have been spent writing reports of the action for the coroner, being interviewed by the CO, being grilled by Frenchie and having his every move pored over, every detail of the ambush brought up from the thrilling fog of memory into the stark white light of an inquest.

  He knew there had been many, many things wrong with how he had conducted the action. Why had he been so blasé about the ICOM threat? He had forgotten about it the moment they left Eiger. Why hadn’t he made the barma team get back into Jessie’s wagon more quickly? Why had he even bothered to barma that VP in the first place? They’d been over the ground five hours before, and in that hard earth it was impossible to dig in an IED. But most of all he wondered why on earth he had run forward to Jessie’s wagon and then back with GV through the tracer gauntlet when he could just have told Davenport to drive forward and put his bumper at the back of Three Two. That way they could have done the casevac in the cover of his own wagon.

  He was sweating. It was so simple. Why hadn’t he driven up to the wagon? And why had none of the lads asked him about this? Surely it was blindingly obvious that that would have been the safest thing to do.

  Tom leaned over the side of his camp cot to his Osprey folded neatly beneath. He unzipped it, reached behind the front plate to the envelope he kept there and opened the letter from his father. He cast his mind back, far away, to the little boy in the den at home reading it for the first time. He didn’t need to look at the words; he knew them by heart. He ran through them all in his head, lips mouthing every one, until they reached ‘Nothing in excess,’ where they stopped
moving and felt dry. He knew deep down then, in that instant, that he had run across the gap not because he wasn’t thinking clearly but because he was, because he wanted the thrill, and when it had come, he had loved it.

  The run back through the bullets with one in front of him passing between GV’s legs? That was why he had joined the army. His heart started racing, his pupils dilated, all these thoughts whirling through his skull in seconds. He had to get out there again. He couldn’t wait for it.

  What was he becoming? Or had he always been this, and the weeks out here were just stripping away the layers draped over him and drawing them back to reveal the raw violence inside him?

  Clive walked in, and Tom shook himself out of his dream. ‘There you are! Looking for you everywhere. Look what I’ve got!’ He dangled a piece of paper over Tom’s eyes, which struggled to focus in the dull afternoon gloom. An e-bluey.

  Tom snatched out at it, but Clive whipped it away at the last second. ‘Not so fast. Who’s this from?’ He looked at it theatrically. He’d already read the sender’s details on the outside. ‘Cassandra Foskett!? Oh I see! The Doris.’

  ‘Give it here.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Nothing. Give it here.’

  ‘How about I read it out aloud? Like a bedtime story. With the whole squadron listening.’

  ‘Give it here. Or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’

  ‘Or I’ll shoot you in the face.’ Tom reached beneath his bed and suddenly found his pistol in his hand. He just stayed his arm from pointing it at his friend; instead it hung limply from his wrist, but his eyes blazed.

  ‘Jeez, OK, OK. Whoa, boy. Just joshing.’ Clive threw the letter onto the cot and trying to mask his shock left the tent quietly. Tom didn’t notice and ripped open the envelope.

  Christmas Eve

  Half two in the afternoon. After one too many lunchtime gin and tonics. Hic!

  Tom paused. She would have written this just as they were driving Acton back to the MERT. He carried on.

  Dearest dearest Tommikins,

  Only joking! I knew that would annoy you. Big rough tough soldier little Tommikins! How are you, my Afghan warrior? I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to have Christmas out there; I bet you it is a world away from here. We are in London, and it has been snowing and magical and it is like a ghost town and just like those stories we used to read as children. Frosty windowpanes, breath steaming like clouds as you walk and snowmen all over Battersea Park. Oh Tom, it is so, so lovely here and yippee I have a week off work and I’m going skiing on Boxing Day with Jasper Smith and Charlie De Groot – remember them from Cambridge – out to stay with, yes you’ve guessed it, Jonty Forbes in his chalet in Wengen.

  Tom had to stop. She what? While he was out here, she was running off with two of those tossers from Cambridge? He vaguely remembered the Jasper one as a tall sneering embodiment of everything he had resented about his time there. As for Charlie Grotbag, who knew what rock he had crawled out from under? And they were staying with that utter wanker Jonty. He lapsed into dreaming about the Taliban opening up a second front in Wengen and laying IEDs on its slopes. He’d defect and join them.

  I know, I know. You’ll hate me for it, but as I told you, Mum and Dad are best friends with his, etc., and I couldn’t refuse a free invitation, could I? You know me; yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch! Anyway, it’s only for four days or so. I come back on New Year’s Day. I wonder what you will be doing then.

  Probably with Dusty pummelling seven shades of shit with my 30 mil into some poor Afghan.

  But Tom, I want you to know something. Can we talk when you’re back? It’s just that, well, I don’t know. It feels weird this, keeping whatever’s going on between us going on by letter. I mean, it all feels a bit like a Jane Austen novel.

  He braced himself for the hit. When it came though, it wasn’t as bad as he expected.

  Tom, I don’t know what is going to happen between now and when you’re back on leave. I mean, I don’t really know what I mean. Oh bollocks, I shouldn’t have had all that gin. It’s just that I can’t wait to see you, but I don’t want to keep my life on hold for all the while you’re gone. It feels like I’m a war widow sometimes, for Christ’s sakes, and we haven’t even slept together for two years.

  Two and a half.

  Tom, I think I’m just trying to say in an incredibly clumsy way that I really want you back here. Every day there’s news about soldiers dying in Afghanistan and every party I seem to go to is in aid of some sort of army charity, and there are wounded boys who are all smiling and pretending to be having a good time but it must be just so awful.

  And I bet your mate Jonty’s on the committee for half of these parties, crying crocodile tears every time he hears of another death.

  I didn’t even know where Afghanistan was, I realized at one of these parties when someone stood up to make a speech about it, an officer who reminded me of you. He had your hair and your eyes, but he had his sleeve pinned up at his shoulder where he had lost his arm. He was very cheery and kept on making lots of jokes about himself. I talked to him afterwards and he was so nice. But I felt embarrassed when I got home, so I (how pathetic is this) looked where it was in the atlas. So there you are! Right next to Iran. And just south of Tajikistan. Wouldn’t it be fun to go to those places travelling some time?

  I can think of better ones.

  I’m rambling. I’m going to press send straightway, otherwise I’ll look back at this in half an hour, realize it is all embarrassing gobbledegook and delete it. But I hope something of the above has made sense.

  Clear as mud.

  All I want is for you to be back safe, and I want to see you. But all I’m saying is that I don’t know if you and I are boyfriend and girlfriend, or friend and friend, or nothing at all, or what. I can’t promise you anything, Tom. Nothing. Apart from the fact that I will see you when you’re back, and I am counting down the days till then.

  Tommikins, I am going to miss you, my little Christmas bunny. Hope you’re a good boy and that Father Christmas is nice.

  From Cassie the Red-Nosed Reindeer xxxxxxx

  Tom rested the letter on his chest. He really wanted to see her. He lay on his cot in silence, eyes open and vacant. Finally he sighed, heaved himself up and tried to throw her out of his mind. She could wait. He needed to see the boys. He got up and went out into the dark to find Trueman. As he left he bumped straight into him. ‘Hi, sir. I was looking for you.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You’re wanted in the ops room. They didn’t say why. The leader asked for you and all the troop leaders.’

  Tom’s heart lifted into his mouth. The op was on. ‘Christ. This must be the op.’

  ‘Dunno, sir; think it’s a bit more panicked than that. Some duty rumour going around that Shah Kalay might be about to fall. Apparently the militia are surrounded in that compound of theirs.’

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Like I do with most ops. I’ll be shitting myself until we’re ’mongst it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then –’ he paused, and the sides of his mouth turned up ‘– well, it’ll be gleaming.’

  About 30 km north of Loy Kabir

  12th January 2010

  Will,

  Haaaaaappy New Year!

  If this doesn’t find you neck-deep in a barrel of grog somewhere I am going to find you and kill you. You should see me at the moment; we’ve been on the ground, in the ulu, living off the wagons for more than two weeks now in the freezing, freezing brass-monkeys cold, and I look like a frostbitten Patrick Swayze from Point Break. Well, that’s what I think I look like, but the lads say I remind them of Compo from Last of the Summer Wine. Impertinent bastards; I’ll have them all flogged when we’re back. Apologies for the length of this letter, mate; it’s going to take about eight blueys or so to get all this down and you’ll probably get them all on different days and in the wrong order, so
I’ll number them at the end. We’re having a maint day in the desert, and my wagons are in pretty good order, so all the boys are just getting their heads down. I thought I’d write and give you the low-down. Bugger all else to do.

  It’s been a busy old time since Christmas; I thought winter tours were meant to be chilled out. Not this one, it’s been madder than a dog in a bag. I don’t even want to know how much 30 mil we’ve got down range in the last days. I think the squadron’s on something like fifteen confirmed enemy KIA. Basically, the much-heralded op that we were going to do came good just after Christmas. Op Tor Barcha IV, aka Op Certain Death. There’s this town I told you about beforehand, I think, Shah Kalay, which is where the governor of Loy Kabir lives and his militia rule over it. They’d completely fucked up and on Christmas Day were holed up in their compound, being attacked from all sides by the local Taliban. The town was about to fall, and so on the evening of the 26th, after a manic day of battle prep, we sent out this relief column (that makes it sound like Mafeking!), C Squadron with all our Scimitars and then loads of infantry crammed into Mastiffs, with the plan to drive deep into the desert in a massive feint to the north overnight, and then in the morning swing south to appear on the ridge line overlooking the town. Then four Chinook loads would bring BG Tac and a company of ANA and we’d go through the town together, the infantry clearing the objectives and us in intimate support through the alleyways.

  The town was split into five objectives around compounds that we thought the enemy would base in, Objectives Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev and Princess Grace. So called because our Ops is a massive Cold War nut and they’re all names from ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. Bardot was the northernmost, and was the police station. We’d secure that, link up with the militia, and then move south through the town, clearing each objective over the day. We’d hang around for a couple of days afterwards, leave the ANA company and the OMLT there as a bolstering force, and then come back for tea and medals. Sound simple? It was a total clusterfuck.