Poppy Day (10 page)

Martin didn’t tell Poppy where he was going or what he was planning. He wanted to show her that he could use his
initiative
, could take control of a crappy situation and turn it around. Having left the flat suited and booted, Poppy knew that it was something or somewhere important. Suspecting a job interview, she played along like a wise parent, letting him keep his secret, allowing the suspense to build, not wanting to spoil the big surprise.

When Martin arrived back at the flat and told her where he had been and what he had done, Poppy couldn’t believe it, asking over and over like a broken-down robot, ‘What? You have what? Why? Why, Mart?’ Her smile collapsed as she folded her arms around her middle. His answers were full and honest, yet she kept repeating, ‘You have what?’ followed by, ‘Why?’ as though he spoke in a foreign tongue.

Martin couldn’t hide his disappointment, his confusion. He thought she would be as happy as he was and that she too would see it as the answer to their prayers instead of the
beginning
of their nightmare.

The moment he walked through the door beaming and excited, Poppy saw one word, ‘separation’. To her it was obvious and instant. They were going to be apart, isolated, alone.

She felt swamped by a wave of sadness. Worse still, she couldn’t believe that he didn’t get that! It was as if it hadn’t occurred to him
exactly
what this would mean for them. Poppy bit her bottom lip to avoid calling him a useless idiot, knowing that it would remind him of his dad. Besides, it wasn’t true.

Martin was stunned. It was as if she didn’t know him at all, didn’t understand why he had done it, couldn’t see that it was all about getting a better life for them. He gripped her arms. ‘I want to become someone that you can be proud of.’ In his head he added, ‘… so you don’t find anyone better, so you never leave me. I want a career that pays us enough to start our family. I don’t want to sweep up any more, Poppy, it’s killing me.’ These words would have made all the difference to Poppy, but they were not easy for Martin to say. So much more than a collection of syllables, they were an admission of unhappiness, a statement of insecurity.

‘But Mart, I’m already proud of you.’

He knew she meant it, making him feel guilty and a little bit sad.

She shook her head. ‘What’s going to happen, Mart, what have you done to us?’

They stood facing each other, bit players in a low-budget drama, playing strangers. It was awkward, embarrassing, all the things you don’t expect to feel when you are with your spouse, your soulmate. Martin could hear the faintest whisper of a little voice on his shoulder, ‘Nice one, Mart, you’ve really ballsed things up, just when you had it pretty perfect.’

Martin thought he’d get a house with a garden, be well paid and learn a trade. He planned on taking that skill and setting up for himself somewhere. He was undecided between
plumbing
and mechanics. He thought wrong. His spur-of-the-moment decision meant there had been little time for research. He was an infantryman; the pay was low, barely enough, less than he had been getting at the garage. He had been told that he could transfer to another trade at a later date. Martin hoped that this was not another empty statement, designed to lure him. There were no houses, or even flats, available for them; not in their area, not yet, and moving away was out of the question for Poppy. Unlike other army wives, she couldn’t set up home in barracks close to where her husband trained, not when she was needed elsewhere. They were stuck in their council flat, albeit with the army paying some of the rent.

Martin was used to being treated like dirt, it was how he had grown up, yet he didn’t expect it now. Not at his age, not now that he was someone’s husband, someone that had been tasked with protecting Queen and country. He was out of
practice
at taking crap. He quickly got used to it again.

The basic training was dull, repetitive and physical, designed to flex his will if not break it, to help him see that doing what he was told when asked was the most important thing in the world. He learnt that lesson fairly quickly, taking orders and literally keeping his head down. It was only when deployed in theatre that Martin understood the full value of his instruction. The last one to follow an order, the last one to react, the man that questioned the task was the one that risked not only his own safety but that of his entire unit.

Martin wasn’t interested in being the funniest, the most outrageous or the one that pushed the boundaries until they almost got thrown out, although he worked very closely with the aforementioned three.

His agenda was different. He wasn’t looking to make friends, but that happened by default. He wasn’t searching for a
replacement
family like some of the loners and weirdos; Poppy was all the family that he would ever need. Instead, he wanted to see where being good at something might take him. Martin smiled when he thought of where it had taken him, where he had arrived. So much for that theory.

Martin’s date to leave for Afghanistan had been set. At every encounter during his basic training it sat between him and Poppy like an invisible tumour, never mentioned, yet acutely felt, in the vain hope that it would somehow disappear through neglect. The day arrived sooner than either of them was
prepared
for; hitting them squarely on the breastbone with such force, it left them breathless. Unspoken angst bubbled behind every sentence, rendering normal speech and action impossible. A new and awkward formality had existed between them for some weeks; both were so concerned with avoiding the topic, it became a verbal dam that stopped words and sentiment from flowing freely.

He knew that Poppy made a conscious decision to try and put things right, to try and make it as special as she could. She had bought a bottle of wine, washed her hair and liberally applied perfume. He was grateful, wanting to somehow bridge the gap from anger and despair to a place of calm acceptance. It was not to be.

Their arguments were so infrequent that Martin could recall them all, word for word. In the weeks ahead, he wouldn’t remember exactly how it started, but would recollect what was said and how it ended.

Martin was far from happy. He was scared, anxious and would have given anything not to have been packing for a trip that he did not want to take. It was the first time his wife had voiced her fears with such clarity. It made him feel like shit.

He wanted to fall into her arms, pull his fingers through her hair and feel the weight of her against his chest. He wanted her to grant him forgiveness.

Martin wished that he had explained it better, told her that it was too late for him to fix things, he had to go. He wanted to shout out that he didn’t want to go to Afbloodyghanistan. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He was thinking of what to do or say next when she folded her arms around her waist and crept into the bathroom. Martin walked into the dark lounge and lowered himself onto the sofa. He rubbed his flat palms over his two day stubble, giving his wife a few minutes to get into her nightie and under the covers before creeping into bed beside her. He lay far out of reach without touching or speaking; he felt the opportunity for repair diminishing and was swept by a new wave of despair.

They spent their last night together on a cold mattress with a large space between them. Despite his exhaustion Martin didn’t sleep, he listened to Poppy moving and breathing, knowing that he wouldn’t be hearing the telltale noises of her presence for some time, missing her before he had even left. The atmosphere was so strained it was as if the air had physical weight, bearing down on them as they each struggled to escape through slumber.

This was the sad reality of their last night together. The bottle of wine remained in the fridge, its screw top firmly in place. Poppy’s clean hair absorbed the tears that ran over her nose and towards her pillow. The pain at his leaving was so great; both wanted it to be over. It couldn’t have been any further from what Martin had imagined their last night together might be.

Now, in this dingy room, he wished with his whole being that he could go back to that room, that night and make things right. He would have found the courage to reach across the mattress; he would have found her hand under the covers and held it tight.

P
OPPY HARDLY SLEPT
. The morning taunted her through a gap in the bedroom curtains. She considered the cruel trick Father Time played on insomniacs, making each restless minute in the wee small hours feel like an hour, yet when the day arrived, it sprang from the dark with alarming speed, hours passed in minutes and minutes became seconds… She was tempted to stay in bed, to pull the duvet over her head and let the world turn without joining in. Almost instantly she saw an image of Martin, tied up and dirty. She knew that while he was in that state, in that place, wherever that place was, she would not allow herself the luxury of wallowing in bed and reflecting on her own sorrow. She would stay strong for him, for both of them.

Poppy tried to shake off the fug of futility. Deep down she knew it wasn’t her fault, but something bad had happened to someone she loved and she could do nothing to fix it. She felt useless and responsible all at the same time. As for guilt, she had the monopoly. Guilty for having a hot bath, imagining this wasn’t possible for Mart. Drinking tea made her consider his thirst; every small, common activity left her full of remorse.

It was to be a horrible day spent in limbo. Coincidentally, it was Poppy’s day off. Welcoming the diversion, she cleared up the kitchen, scrubbing at the fish finger pan until it shone,
disposing
of the burnt offering and mopping the sticky floor. Her attempt to gain mental solace through the restoration of her physical space failed.

Since her husband had been deployed, Poppy missed him at quite a basic level; aware of the space on the sofa next to her, the preparing, cooking and eating of a meal for one, or having to take the rubbish out to the communal bins on her own in the dark. That was always Mart’s job; she hated doing it, partly through a dislike of rats, but mainly a fear of the drug addicts, tarts and gangs that hung around the bins. Despite her anxiety, it made her smile with an ironic lack of comprehension, of all the places that you could congregate and make your patch, why pick behind the stinking bins?

Poppy developed a coping strategy, by NOT thinking about him too much. She found that by keeping herself busy and in a fairly tight routine, it didn’t leave too many thinking gaps. There were times when this wasn’t possible: if something funny or interesting happened, she would instantly want to tell Martin, to share the joke or get his opinion. When she couldn’t, the fact that he was not close to her would have to sink in all over again.

Poppy ran her finger over the wedding photo on the
mantelpiece
, taken only three years ago, and yet right now it was like looking at a snapshot of another lifetime. She studied her
reflection
in the edge of the picture; her image suggesting she had aged considerably more than the thirty-six months that had passed since that moment in the pub.

Their wedding was a quiet, informal affair at the local registry office. They were getting hitched at two-thirty p.m. and with ceremonies at two p.m. and three p.m., were nervous
passengers
astride a nuptial conveyor belt.

Poppy and Martin were sandwiched between Courtney and Darren, and Carmel and Lloyd. Carmel and Lloyd sounded to Poppy like an expensive department store.

She could picture one of the women from the big houses on the other side of the High Street with the expensive hairdo, four by four, nanny and en suite, saying to her husband as she looked for the car keys on the scrubbed pine dresser, ‘Darling, just nipping off to Carmel and Lloyd’s for some foie gras. We’re running a bit low and I couldn’t bear the idea of not being able to offer any to Charles and Felicity tonight.’ Her husband, irritated by her nasal tone and knowing that she wouldn’t actually
eat
anything herself, would barely register her comments as he shook invisible creases from his
Telegraph
. Courtney and Darren turned out to be chavs.

All attending guests had been muddled up by a useless
security
attendant. Poppy had since wondered if maybe he wasn’t useless, but instead found his job so monotonously soul
destroying
that he did this kind of thing occasionally on purpose to relieve the boredom. They began reciting their vows when someone shouted, ‘That’s not our Courtney!’ Poppy looked up to see Dorothea crying onto the suited shoulder of a very dapper black man who was meant to be attending either the wedding that had finished early or the one that had not yet started. Most girls would have been angry about such a
monumental
mix-up on their wedding day, but not Poppy. The whole thing struck her as extremely funny, the idea of her nan
blissfully
unaware that she was sharing her granddaughter’s special event with so many complete strangers.

The upshot was that Martin and Poppy sniggered and
tittered
through the short, matter-of-fact ceremony with none of the presupposed emotion that you might assume accompanies a girl’s big day. There wasn’t much big about any of it, if you disregarded Courtney’s arse, which was huge and clad in peach sateen. Poppy had glimpsed her in the garden with a cigarette clamped between her carmine-painted mouth, taking care not to set fire to the over-sprayed curls that sat on her heavily rouged cheeks. She reminded Poppy of a big, fat dolly, although no dolly she had ever seen or played with uttered the phrases that left Courtney’s mouth on that day.

Poppy watched, fascinated, as the trembling photographer tried to coerce the reluctant wedding party onto the steps for a group shot. Courtney removed her fag and held it aloft as her numerous children bunched around her legs. She drew breath and bellowed towards the car park, ‘Darren get over ’ere, you fucking idiot!’

It made Poppy cringe, it made her sad. The diminutive Darren with his shaved head and twinkling diamond earring, ambled over at his future wife’s behest. His hands thrust deep into too-shallow pockets, shoulders hunched forward
accentuating
the tight fit of his jacket and a thin, hand-rolled cigarette dangling unlit from his bottom lip. He looked beaten. She couldn’t see a happy ending for Courtney and Darren, who even on this their ‘Special Day’ appeared steeped in abject misery. They looked utterly disappointed and angry as though they had hoped for a small reprieve from their wretched lives for twenty-four hours. They had probably assumed that as this was their ‘Special Day’ they would feel special, but the fact was their lives were still crap. The only difference was that today they were crap in a hired suit and a second-hand frock.

For Poppy Day, there was no church, choir or vicar, no flash dress, bridesmaids or flowers, no real reception, wedding cake or confetti, no floating down the aisle with piped music among bunched lilies and trailing ivy, no veil, no dad to give her away, no dad full stop. No honeymoon somewhere hot with terribly good food, no photos capturing the ‘essence of their nuptials’, none of those things. Oh and no mum, but that’s a story in itself. Instead, it was twenty minutes of laughter, a pint in the pub with their mates who sang ‘ta da da da…’ repeatedly to the tune of ‘Here comes the bride’ as they arrived, then home to bed.

Poppy phoned her mum a few weeks before the wedding. The handset that reunited them across the miles was slippery in her sweating palm.

‘’ello, love.’

Poppy could tell that she was lighting a cigarette as she was speaking. It was that particular talking out of the side of the mouth voice with teeth clenched as she sparked the flint into action.

‘How are you, Mum?’

‘Oh, you know.’

Poppy did know. It was for Cheryl another disappointing venture that had promised gold dust and delivered sawdust. Another bloke that had promised her paradise and for the first few weeks had seemed like a prince as he wined, dined and snogged the face off her, but what do you know? Shock! Horror! Gasp! He turned out to be a fat, balding cretin, once she stayed sober long enough to realise. Yet again she found herself shackled to a loser cast from the same mould as all the others, in a downmarket beach resort. After a few drinks, her new home looked like the Caribbean, but on a rainy Tuesday with no money or friends, it might as well have been Blackpool. At least in Blackpool, Cheryl could have got a decent cup of tea and chatted to the locals.

‘I’ve got some news, Mum.’

‘Oh yeah?’

Whether Poppy was about to announce a terminal illness or a big lottery win, her mum couldn’t have cared less. Actually, that wasn’t true; a big lottery win would probably be the one thing to grab her interest.

‘Mart and I are getting married!’

‘When?’

‘In about four weeks’ time.’

‘Not when’s the wedding. When are you due?’

‘Due for what?’

‘The baby! You silly cow!’

It took Poppy a while to follow her train of thought, or lack of it. Luckily, her life with Dorothea meant she was well practised in drawing threads from incoherent rubbish and turning it into something recognisable. ‘There is no baby.’ Poppy bit down on her bottom lip and avoided the temptation to add ‘you silly cow.’

‘No baby?’

‘No baby.’

‘Well thank Christ for that! I can just see Terry’s face when I told him he was shagging a granny!’

‘Nice.’

‘Why are you getting married then?’

‘Why?’

‘Yeah, well I mean if there is no baby…’

‘Because we love each other, Mum, and that’s what people in love do. Well, it’s what we want to do.’

‘But Martin Cricket…’

Poppy felt her hackles rise, putting her instantly in defensive mode. ‘What about Martin Cricket?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, babes. He’s not exactly going to set the world on fire, is he?’

Poppy didn’t answer. She knew that if she started on how he loved her, looked after her and always had, it might escalate into how her mum didn’t and hadn’t. Poppy avoided those conversations at all costs; it was better for everyone like that.

Cheryl squealed suddenly, ‘Ooh Poppy! I bought a lovely turquoise chiffon frock with a matching coat that will be perfect with the right jewellery!’

Poppy smiled at the first hint of enthusiasm in her mum’s voice, deciding to ignore the fact that this energy had been reserved for discussing clothes and not her forthcoming marriage. She was going to be there and that was something. ‘So you’ll come then?’ she tried not to sound too surprised or hopeful.

‘It’s my little girl’s wedding, my baby’s big day! Of course I’ll come. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

Poppy beamed down the phone, inexplicably delighted. It would be nice for her nan to have her there.

‘I’d like to help out moneywise but…’

‘Don’t worry, Mum; it’s all been taken care of.’

It wasn’t until the day after the wedding that Poppy
remembered
her mum, realising at the same time that she hadn’t been there. Jenna, en route to the registry office, had spotted her outside a pub off the precinct. It had been some years since she’d seen her and she was shocked by Cheryl’s reed-thin figure,
indicative
of a body sustained by alcoholic fumes and liquid calories. A turquoise coat hung on her depleted frame. Emaciated ankles teetered and slid inside white patent leather heels. A gold handbag with an ornate clasp, the kind that made a satisfying audible snap when closed, banged against her bony hip. She was with a couple of blokes from the market. All three were
paralytic
, unable to talk or apparently stand as they slid down the wall, ending up as a heap of entwined limbs. Cheryl’s frothy, pale blue creation covered them all and one of her drunken chums sported a feathered hat of similar colour, sitting askew his lolling head.

At the time, Poppy didn’t know whether to find it sad or funny that her mum managed to get all the way from Lanzabloodygrotty to London, but was then so distracted by a bottle of vodka that she couldn’t make the last five hundred yards to the service or reception. She now thought it was sad, not funny. Not funny at all.

As she arranged the cushions on the sofa, the doorbell rang. Poppy could hear Jenna’s loud, off-key singing before she saw her. She slid the chain. Her friend didn’t wait for an invite; they were years beyond that. Jenna pushed past her, casually
planting
a kiss on her face between lyrics. She skipped into the kitchen and proceeded to fill the kettle. Poppy stood in the hallway, unmoving. ‘SOS’, the Abba song of choice, was being belted from the kitchen.

‘When you’re gone, though I try, how can I carry on? When you’re gone, how can I even try to go on…?’ Jenna danced back down the hallway until she stood in front of her friend. She sang into a wooden spoon that usually sat in a ceramic storage jar shaped like a chicken, next to the back of the cooker. She was singing, laughing and waiting for Poppy to join in, but she didn’t. Jenna stopped abruptly. Poppy’s expression and lack of enthusiasm for the performance told her that something was not quite right. ‘What’s wrong, babes? Wha’samatter?’

Poppy shook her head; once again her tears pooled. Jenna’s anxiety levels rose almost instantly. It wasn’t like Poppy to behave in this way, especially when there was the opportunity to indulge in a spot of hairbrush karaoke. She would usually lead the singing and then jump into an impromptu dance routine, but not today. The longer she was silent, the more panic set in. It became tangible, swirling around, cocooning the girls in a mist of impatience and anxiety that prompted Jenna to start guessing.

‘Is it Dorothea?’

‘No, no.’

‘Your mum?’

Poppy smiled as if to say, what on earth could have
happened
to her that would bother me? ‘No.’

There was a moment of hesitation while Jenna considered the other, more obvious option. She placed her hand on her best friend’s arm, ‘Poppy, is it Mart?’

Poppy looked at her mate’s face, etched with the worry of someone that loved her and was hurting to see her hurt. She nodded.

Jenna swooped forward, enveloping Poppy in her arms; her tears were instant and sincere.