Home Fires (30 page)

The security guard gives them two paper name-tags, each one dangling from black lariats. Andrew immediately puts his round his neck. Caroline leaves hers hanging from her hand. They sit on a squashy black leather sofa for several minutes, staring at a large clock with roman numerals hanging high up on one wall and Caroline makes an effort to calm herself. At almost ten past, a statuesque blonde woman wearing shiny black high heels clip-clops to the security barrier. Caroline senses immediately that this is Camilla. She is wearing a dark grey pencil skirt that is a shade too tight, a tailored pin-stripe shirt and a waistcoat nipped in provocatively at the waist. The policemen look her up and down appreciatively and it is clear that Camilla is aware of this, that she revels in it, and yet her facial expression is one of disdain as she extends a limp hand in greeting.

‘Mr and Mrs Weston?’

Andrew says with incongruous jollity, ‘Yes, that’s us.’

‘Hi, I’m Camilla.’ She looks at Caroline appraisingly. She does not smile. ‘I think we’ve spoken on the phone.’

There is something supercilious about her manner. It strikes Caroline that, for all that she and Andrew have been through, they are not particularly important in Camilla’s eyes. Camilla does not see what the two of them have lost – she can’t. She doesn’t know who they were before this happened, before Max died. She sees only a middle-aged couple with tired faces and fraying clothes. A man in a suit that is beginning to wear out at the elbows. A woman in a drab raincoat and not enough lipstick. Two people who have let themselves go, who do not make the effort to keep up appearances.

Camilla takes them through the barriers and presses a button to call the lift, standing with her head tilted upwards, humming softly as she waits. The lift takes them up two floors and the doors open with a shushing sound. Camilla does not speak as she leads them through a long corridor, but she walks at a brisk, unforgiving pace so that by the time they reach Derek Lester’s office, Caroline is out of breath and her make-up feels slippery with sweat.

They are led into a room with wide, high windows and pale cream walls. There is a wooden desk at one end, on top of which are a stack of papers and an old-fashioned lamp with a green glass shade. A child’s painting has been blu-tacked on to a noticeboard behind the desk, the paper daubed with fingerprints of blue and yellow. Camilla gestures to four chairs placed around a low coffee table piled up with the day’s newspapers. Andrew and Caroline sit beside each other, facing the windows. The sky lies bleached and heavy against the treetops, as though supported by the tips of the branches. Andrew takes her hand. This time, she does not resist.

‘The minister will be in shortly,’ says Camilla, turning to pick up a file of papers from the desk and leaving the room without another word.

‘Charming,’ murmurs Andrew.

Caroline is unable to speak. She takes out a plastic folder full of documents, printed out from the computer at home and leafs through them, mentally noting the paragraphs marked in yellow highlighter, reminding herself of the arguments she must make, the questions she must get an answer to. It feels as though she is revising for an exam. Her stomach flips in anticipation of what is about to happen.

Derek Lester appears from a side door, followed by a man in a dark suit. Caroline hears his voice before she sees him because he is just finishing off a phone call as he walks through. ‘Yep, fine,’ he says, his Blackberry pressed to his ear. He notices them, then gives a half-smile and a curt nod of acknowledgement. ‘Listen, Jeremy, I’ve got to go. Yeah. Yeah. No, I’ve got something on. OK. Speak later.’ He taps a button and comes over to the two of them, shrugging his shoulders in a show of rueful embarrassment. ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ he says, his voice betraying a hint of West Country burr. He shakes their hands – Andrew’s first – and then sits down opposite, placing his Blackberry on the coffee table. Caroline can see its red light winking at her as Lester speaks. The man in the suit takes a seat in the corner of the room, balances a pad of paper on his knees and removes a fountain pen from his jacket pocket.

‘Thank you for taking the trouble to come all this way,’ Lester says. He has round features with small, piggy brown eyes and thin wisps of hair that emphasise his rotundity. The collar on his shirt looks too tight, so that the flesh of his neck spills over the edges like an over-iced cake. When he sits down, he gives a tiny but audible groan with the relief of it.

‘Before we get started, I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss. I’ve spoken at length to Max’s superiors and, by all accounts, he was a truly exceptional young man.’ He pauses and Caroline wonders briefly if he is waiting for some sort of thank you. She notices that his eyes slide towards his Blackberry and then, catching himself, he looks up at them again. ‘I hope you don’t mind if Tom –’ he gestures to the corner of the room – ‘sits in on this. Civil Service protocol, you understand.’ Tom gives a small nod, then returns to his note-taking. ‘Now,’ Lester says, ‘what can I help you with?’

Andrew clears his throat. ‘It’s good of you to see us,’ he starts and Caroline is taken aback. She had not expected Andrew to speak first and she is, unaccountably, infuriated. He knows nothing about the background, she thinks. He hasn’t done any of the work.

Before she can stop herself, Caroline interjects and although she intends to say something fluent and to the point, she manages to utter only two words. ‘Body armour,’ she says.

Lester twitches his head. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘So you should be,’ Caroline replies and when she speaks it is as though the words are someone else’s. Andrew squeezes her hand roughly, warning her to stop. She ignores him. Lester’s face betrays no surprise. He leans back in his seat, crossing his legs and contemplatively propping up his face with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

‘I can understand how difficult this must be for you, Mrs Weston . . .’ he says and his voice has a different tone now, no longer deferential, but harder-edged, almost defensive.

‘No, you can’t, Mr Lester,’ Caroline says, gripping hold of the plastic folder so tightly that the tips of her fingers turn yellow-white. ‘Trust me. You really can’t.’ There is an uncomfortable silence. Outside, a police siren screeches in the distance. Beneath the window, a child laughs in the street below and it is a strange, dreamy sound that seems to come from another dimension.

Caroline looks Lester directly in the eye and continues. ‘But what you can do is tell me precisely what body armour Max was wearing when he was killed.’ There is a lump in her throat that is making it difficult for her to finish. ‘I would like to know,’ she says, in barely more than a whisper, ‘if his battalion –
1
Rifles,
12
Mechanised Brigade – had been provided with the latest kit. If you,
personally
, as Armed Forces Minister, ensured that Max had the best kit available at the time of his death.’

Andrew’s face has paled. His lips are pressed together, his jawbone locked in position. He has, she thinks, always disliked a public scene. Across the table, Lester gives a dry little cough and then takes out a badly folded handkerchief from his trouser pocket, dabbing at his lips. The skin around his mouth has become red and clammy. Caroline sees a small nick to one side of his flabby chin where he has cut himself shaving. How odd, she finds herself thinking, to imagine this odious man doing something as mundane as shaving. This morning, he must have presented his features to the bathroom mirror as normal, sliding his razor steadily over his ginger-brown stubble, not yet aware of the confrontation that the day would hold for him; blissfully ignorant of the fact that she, Caroline Weston, mother of Lance Corporal Max Weston, killed at the age of
21
by an IED in Upper Nile State, South Sudan, would be asking him, Derek Lester, to tell her why it had happened.

She can feel herself tingling, as though an electric surge is pushing through her veins. She is buoyed by the thought that she is forcing him to look her in the face, to see up close the grief he has caused. Let him suffer, she thinks. Let him squirm and wriggle and sweat with the cost of it.

‘Well, Mrs Weston, as it happens I am in a position to answer that.’

For a moment she does not think she has heard him correctly. She had expected him to obfuscate, to duck and dive and weave around the subject like most politicians do when faced with a direct question.

‘I’m sorry?’ Caroline says.

Andrew sits forward in his chair. ‘You mean you can tell us what body armour he was wearing?’

Lester smiles. He actually smiles. ‘Both the body armour he was wearing and the body armour he had been provided with,’ he says, confident demeanour regained. He reaches across to the desk and picks up a single piece of typed paper. That single sheet of paper – so insubstantial, so easily blown away – makes Caroline want to cry out. The fact that Max’s life could have been condensed to such trivial proportions, that all the reams and reams of paper she had printed off about shortages of equipment, all the letters asking for post-mortem details, all those black-edged condolence cards and sympathetic handwritten notes sent in the aftermath of Max’s death – all of it was just words, just meaningless words. It was worthless. Because all that they need to know is now contained on one side of a single sheet of paper held between Derek Lester’s thumb and forefinger. One single sheet.

The room appears to shrink around her. Lester holds the paper for a few seconds longer than he needs to and she realises that she hates him, more than she has ever hated anyone, for the power he holds over them. She focuses her attention on an inky spot of dirt trapped under the crescent of his thumbnail. She must not give into the panic.

‘Yes,’ Lester is saying. ‘All the details are right here in front of me. I know you had some concerns, Mrs Weston, and I can tell you that Max was wearing enhanced body combat armour.’

‘The old kit?’ she asks and, for a brief moment, she feels triumphant.

Lester nods his head, just once. ‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ he says. Caroline glances across at Andrew. She can tell he is surprised. It is proof that she has been right all along: Max was wearing the wrong body armour. It did not protect him sufficiently. This is why he died. And Derek Lester is to blame. Her throat grows dry. Lester is still speaking.

‘Nonetheless,’ he says, ‘your son had been supplied with the Osprey body armour several weeks before his unit was deployed.’ The words come out of his mouth in an indistinct jumble. It takes Caroline a while to work out what they mean, to put them in the right order. ‘We take our responsibilities towards the men who serve our country very, very seriously, Mrs Weston. It would be a failure of duty if we did not provide them with the very best kit available.’

Caroline is too shocked to say anything. Beside her, Andrew speaks. ‘So what you’re saying, Mr Lester – and correct me if I’m wrong here – but what you’re saying is that Max had the Osprey armour but decided, for whatever reason, not to wear it on the day he was killed?’

‘Yes, that’s about the size of it, I’m afraid.’ He uncrosses his legs, leaning forwards with his arms on his legs, hands steepled in front of his face. ‘Mrs Weston, Mr Weston,’ he says looking at them both in turn. ‘What you have been through in the past few months is more than any parent should ever have to bear. I can only say how indebted we are, as a government and as a nation, to your son’s heroic sacrifice and I hope you can find it in yourselves to accept my profound and heartfelt cond—’

Caroline stops him mid-sentence. ‘Do you have a son, Mr Lester?’ He stares at her sharply.

‘Yes,’ he says, pushing his chair back a few centimetres. ‘David.’ He reaches inside his jacket and takes out a battered brown wallet which he unfolds and passes to her. ‘He’s
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.’ There is a plastic section on one side of the wallet which contains a laughing family photograph. Lester is in the middle, wearing a linen open-necked shirt, his face red with sunburn and his arms around a woman Caroline takes to be his wife. His wife is taller than him and unexpectedly pretty. There is a teenage girl on one side of Lester, gawky and limp, glowering at the camera. And on the far left, standing next to his mother, is David. He has curly black, boyish hair and a face rippled with pinkish puppy fat. He is wearing a striped red shirt and there is a fat gold signet ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. Caroline slips the photograph out of the wallet and Lester reaches out his hand, as if to stop her, but then seems to reconsider and sits back in his chair.

Caroline holds the photo up to her face. ‘David,’ she says, drawing out the shape of the name. ‘He doesn’t look like a soldier.’ And she smiles. Lester chuckles uneasily. ‘No, he’s not terribly sporty.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you’d want him to be in the army, would you?’

‘Well, if it was what he wanted –’ Lester starts.

‘You’d be worried, wouldn’t you?’

‘Caroline,’ Andrew says, placing a hand on her knee. ‘I don’t think this is helping.’

She brushes him away. And, for the first time in her life, she knows exactly what it is she wants to say. It is as though she has been waiting for this, collecting everything she needed to understand over years and years and years of not feeling good enough: picking up all the necessary words, all the clever turns of phrase, all the outward manifestations of confidence – all of it for this particular point in time.

‘Imagine David lying dead on the floor, blood pumping out of him, his jaw hanging off his face, his body parts scattered across the ground,’ she says. ‘You know what we were told, Mr Lester? The post-mortem said there were bits of Max – unidentified bits of him – that had been flung more than fifty metres away. Do you know what that’s like? To know that about your baby, your only child? To have to think of him in the most extreme pain imaginable, crying out for his life?’