Rain (23 page)

The train was pulling into the station, and as the car screeched into the car park Constance held him back as he tried to get out of the car and pecked him twice on the cheek like a woodpecker. He squirmed away and shouted back as he ran to the platform, ‘See you on Tuesday, Ma. I’ll ring when I know what train I’m getting.’ He just made it onto the train, and as it pulled away to London he pushed the window down to wave again.

Constance shouted to him, ‘Behave yourself, Tom! Don’t get into any trouble!’

He pointed to his ears and shook his head, laughing as the train picked up speed. ‘Can’t hear you, Ma. Can’t hear you!’ He watched her recede, tiny and alone, and when she was out of sight he flopped onto the seat, restless with excitement. After five days at home he was heading into London to see Will and Cassie. He had put on a tiny bit of weight in the past five days; Constance had pushed food down his neck from morning to night. He had finally got rid of the last dust in his skin, and after six bouts with a shampoo bottle had managed to rid his hair of it as well. He would spend ages in the bath amazed at the velvety water and the bubbles against his skin.

He went for long walks with Zeppo, lost in the newness of the world around him. It was like he was seeing a colour world after previously being able to view it only in black and white. As though he had had a second birth. At nights he sometimes thought about Afghan, looking into the fire, lost in the roots of the flames and with a glass of whisky in his
hand steadily rising to his lips. He would see all the past weeks in the flames until the fire died.

One night he shifted from the fire and stared fixedly at a photo of his father when he was Tom’s age now. It was of Leonard and his platoon in Northern Ireland. He was standing at the back with his crooked grin and looked so young, younger than all his soldiers. Tom looked hard into the photo until a tear fell on to the glass, and he remembered himself and embarrassedly wiped it off. He put the frame back on the mantelpiece and went upstairs. He stood outside Constance’s room, made sure he could hear her heavy breathing through the ajar door and went to his room to sleep in total peace for ten hours, his body and brain now back into home life.

On the train he sat and scrolled through the messages on his phone. He was going out for supper with Will tonight and then tomorrow having lunch with Cassie. Will was going to give him keys to his flat in Primrose Hill. There were a few other guys kicking around town on leave from A and B Squadrons, so he might bump into them as well. He watched the fields go by and felt a million miles from Loy Kabir.

Sunlight streamed in through the windows to prise open his eyelids. A bolt of pain tore through his head. His mouth was dry; his tongue felt too big for his mouth. He fell off the sofa, staggered to his feet, tripped over the coffee table, which was littered with empty beer bottles and cigarette butts, and crashed onto the floor. He stumbled to the loo, threw some water over his face and locked his mouth around the tap. In the mirror he saw huge bags under his bloodshot eyes. He looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. He was meeting Cassie at one, more than enough time to get ready and sober up.

He stood in the shower for twenty minutes, seeing alcohol steam from his body. He smelt a whiff of tequila and had to
gulp down a retch. He came out, shaved, and then brushed his teeth and tongue. He left the bathroom and smelt bacon in the kitchen. Will was there, already dressed, over a frying pan brimming with sausages, bacon and mushrooms.

‘Here he is! The dead man riseth. Wow. Do you feel as dreadful as you look?’

Tom rubbed his head. ‘Worse. It feels like someone drove a Scimitar over my head. What happened last night?’

‘Well, apart from you almost getting us arrested five times and then drinking me out of house and home, not an awful lot.’

‘I can’t remember anything after supper.’

‘Well, we then tried to get into every bar in London, but you were so lashed that no one was letting us in. Every bouncer who refused us you then had a stand-up argument with, calling them war-dodging REMFs.’

‘Oh God, really?’

‘Yeah. It wasn’t very conducive to getting in anywhere. So we just came back here and got on it. You passed out at about one on the sofa, and I threw that duvet over you. Impressive, mate. After five months away you can still take down some grog. When I came back from tour I was in pieces after a pint.’

‘I don’t feel so clever now.’ He smiled, but a thought nagged him. ‘Mate?’

‘Yeah, pal?’

‘I didn’t say anything weird last night, did I? I mean, apart from hurling abuse at some bouncers. Did I talk about Afghan?’

‘Why do you want to know? Surely you know what you think.’

‘No. That’s the thing. I don’t know what I think about it – under all the layers, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yeah, I know, mate. You talked about your lads a lot. Like, a lot. Jesus, it feels as if I know them as well as you do, the amount of time you spent on them – Trueman, Dusty, Dav, GV– whoever those crazy cats are. I could write their reports myself.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not much. Banging on about how Mickey Mouse the ANA are, but that ain’t exactly revolutionary.’

‘But was there anything else, like more deep-rooted? Like, about fear and stuff?’

‘Well. You talked about contacts and IEDs blah blah, but all pretty normal, mate.’ He broke off, remembering something. ‘There was something else actually. You were talking about it on the walk back here.’

‘What, what?’

‘You were talking about the Taliban lad in black and white you killed in that town. Again, just what you wrote about in the bluey. How you kept dreaming of him, having nightmares about him and how when you killed him you felt invincible.’

‘And?’

Will looked back into the pan and flipped some slices of bacon. ‘I don’t want to say, mate.’

‘No. I need to hear this.’

Will got some plates out of the cupboard and the noise cut between them. He sighed. ‘You said how you were scared that he was still alive, that you hadn’t actually killed him even though you had seen the body. Like he was still around, like a ghost.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

A couple of hours later and feeling somewhere approaching normal, Tom was waiting for Cassie in the Italian restaurant
just behind her house at the kink in the King’s Road. He was early, she was late, but he didn’t mind and sat recovering some strength with a hair-of-the-dog vodka and tonic. She came breezing in, squealed and as he got up hugged him, lifting her knees up behind her and making him take all her weight, in front of the whole room. Tom would have felt like a film star had he not then almost lost his balance and knocked into the table next to theirs.

‘Well hello, hero. Look at you! You look amazing.’ She stroked his arm and exclaimed, ‘My, what big arms we have!’

‘No, I don’t. I look like a skeleton. You look incredible though. Where’s the tan from? That skiing trip?’

‘Yep. Four weeks old but still got it.’

‘How were Pongo, Bongo and Mongo?’

‘Fine, fine, since you ask. Better than ever really.’

‘What about my old mate Jonty – was he there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Not too bad. Slightly chastened whenever I mentioned you. Still don’t think you’re number one on his Christmas-card list.’

‘Yeah, I didn’t get one.’

They ordered, and the food arrived. She talked on and on, telling him all about London, about her new job, about Christmas. After twenty minutes she stopped herself. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it; all I’m doing is banging on about me. How are you? What’s it like? Or is that not the kind of question I’m meant to be asking?’

‘No, no. It’s great to talk about something that isn’t Afghan, to be honest. Seriously. You get so blinkered by it.’ He then unloaded on her all the events of the tour, and she sat rapt, half through shock, half through interest.

He was in a really good mood, left out all the bad stuff and
concentrated on the funny moments. She laughed at all the right bits, looked tense at all the right bits, and when he was really milking the stories for all they were worth leaned forward and grasped his forearm.

Around the restaurant sat people huddled up against the winter, with pasty and sun-starved skin, sniffling and coughing into their food and drink. Cassie shone out against them. She had changed her hair since the summer; it was shorter, more businesslike. Tom had always thought of her as a girl, just as he had always thought of himself as a boy, but, watching as she whispered about the other diners and flirted with the waiter, he realized she had changed. He still felt like a boy around her, though.

She noticed him drift away and kicked him under the table. ‘Tom! Pay attention!’

‘Ow! I am.’

‘OK, what was I just saying?’

‘Um, er, what were you saying?’

She kicked him harder. ‘You are such an oaf. You’ve been staring at my breasts for about a minute, you utter perv.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘Tom, everyone in the restaurant could see you drooling over me. Have you not seen any women in the last five months?’

‘Let me think.’ Tom thought about the American girl in Kandahar but decided it might be best not to mention her. He remembered Corporal Claydon, way back in September, getting her foot blown off. Best leave that aside too. He was desperate not to talk about casualties as he knew that when those floodgates opened there’d be no stopping him. ‘I suppose there are a few artillery girls in our base, but they’re all like East German shot-putters. All the Afghans are covered up in burkas. It’s a shame really, because you can tell they’re
utterly beautiful. But you only get that from looking at the young girls, before they’re taken away to work in the house. There’s this girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, down at this base we have called Eiger. She has the prettiest face of anyone I’ve ever seen; you can just tell she’s going to grow up into an absolute babe. Sorry.’ He grinned. ‘My lingo’s shocking. I mean beautiful woman. Blame the lads for that.’

‘Well at least try to be a tiny bit more civilized than a dribbling caveman. Come on, let’s go.’ She winked at the waiter for the bill.

‘Where to?’

‘Surprise. Come on, slowcoach.’ As they left she looked at him disapprovingly. ‘Oh dear.’

‘What?’

‘You haven’t got a coat.’

‘I know. I’m fine.’

‘I promise you, where we’re going you’re going to freeze.’

‘Oh no. Please don’t say we’re going ice skating. I’ll just break my wrist and end up in Selly Oak next to properly wounded lads from Afghan.’

‘No, somewhere else. But you will need a coat. We can go home for one. You can borrow one of Daddy’s.’

The thought of meeting her father was less than thrilling.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, recognizing his reluctance. ‘Mum and Dad are out skiing themselves at the moment. They’re not back until Wednesday.’

They went to her house. Even in the bright afternoon sunshine it still cast a menacing shadow over the street. Detached and huge, with its dark brickwork it reminded Tom of the kind of place where one of Sherlock Holmes’ enemies might live. He smiled as he remembered how scared he had been of her father when he was a student. In a way Tom was disappointed he was going to miss him. He now seemed a
pantomime figure of fun, to laugh at instead of run away from, with his snobbery and disdain for the army.

They went in and he chose a ridiculous ankle-length coat made of a thick herringbone tweed in an almost white grey, with a black velvet collar perfectly in keeping with her father’s peacocking. He put it on and nearly drowned in it. But it was very warm, and he wished he had had it out on the desert patrols in Afghan. He started out the door.

‘Leave your bag here.’ She pointed to his rucksack.

‘Oh yeah, we’ll be coming back to drop off the coat.’

‘No, I thought you were going to stay here tonight. I mean, you can if you want.’

Ah. Right. This is promising. Play it cool, Tommy, play it cool
. ‘Er, I was just going to stay at …’
Come on, Tom. Come on, mate; for once in your life buck up!
‘I mean, no, yeah, that’d be great. You sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘Great.’

As they left the house and walked down to the river his heart was racing.

They reached the river, full now in the early afternoon and bouncing with sunlight, just like when they had parted back in the summer.

‘So where are we going? I promise you if it’s ice skating then I’m going to run away.’

‘What ice rinks do you know around here?’ She stopped at the black iron gate to Cadogan Pier, punched in a code and opened it. She went behind him, put her hands over his eyes and guided him down the gangway. They came to a halt and she said, ‘Are you ready?’

‘Think so.’

She took her hands away. ‘Oh Lord.’ In front of him was what he could only describe as one hell of a speedboat. ‘What’s this? It’s amazing!’

‘It was Daddy’s birthday present to himself.’

Of course it was.

‘He keeps it here and gets someone to drive him to work in Temple once or twice a week.’

Sounds like him.

‘He sent me on a course, and now I’m qualified to drive it. So, I thought we’d go for a spin. This is my welcome-home present for you!’ She jumped on board. ‘Come on, make yourself useful. Start untying it.’

He wrestled ineffectually with the ropes, and she had to help him. Two minutes later they were pulling out into the Thames. She eased the throttle out and the speed increased. ‘Go on.’

‘What?’

‘Well we can’t exactly talk.’ She was right; the engine made an almighty racket. ‘Go and sit on the front and smoke and just watch the sights.’

Tom made his way up to the front of the boat and sat there, smoking cigarette after cigarette, wrapped up in his lovely snug coat, as London shot by, nothing in front of him as spray flicked up to lash his face.

Finally they stopped just beyond Westminster and sat there bobbing around. She shouted from the cabin, ‘Open that cabinet at the back, will you?’

‘Sure.’ He clambered to the rear of the boat and opened it up. Inside was a magnum of champagne on a bed of ice. He started laughing. ‘This is just taking the mick.’