The History Room (19 page)

I’d fled upstairs, creeping speedily in through the unlocked door and not breathing until I was back in my bed, covers pulled over my head as though whatever I’d sensed in the hall
downstairs might take form and chase after me.

I could feel those same emotions in the hallway now. Not the shame, perhaps, but the other ones: the longing, the mixture of grief and joy. But I felt them from my father and they were directed
at the two young women who had just passed him on their way to the staffroom. He saw me looking at him and dropped his eyes, his face shocked.

‘What is it?’ I asked. He shook his head.

‘Sometimes I think I’m being haunted.’ He seemed to shake himself out of his trance. ‘Come on. Let’s get cracking on your mother’s things.’

I drove to meet Hugh at the station. Out of cowardice I loaded the dog into the car at the last moment. At least he’d provide a topic of conversation if things grew
difficult. Samson’s hot canine breath was reassuring on the side of my face. He gave a low contented sigh and settled into the passenger seat. Perhaps he thought we were off on an expedition
culminating in a long walk. There was no knowing how he’d respond to seeing his master again. Hugh had been his first love. He loved me, too, but it had been Hugh who’d rescued Samson
from a bombed house in Iraq when he’d been posted out there, who’d found someone to patch up his wounds and vaccinate him, who’d somehow managed to fly him home and put him into
quarantine until he could come to live with us in Wiltshire.

‘There’s a bit of something smart in him,’ Hugh’d told me, showing off the dog in the kennels when we went to visit him. ‘Look at the shape of his head. He’s
probably descended from some aristocratic Babylonian dog. A palace dog, or something.’

I’d tried hard to see this pedigree in the friendly mutt wagging his mottled grey-and-white tail at me. ‘If you say so.’

I’d agreed to stay in the car in the pick-up area outside the station. I clutched the steering wheel, feeling the blood pulse around my body. I was still expecting Hugh to move like the
man I’d seen months back: slowly, with obvious pain; but he’d reached the car and was opening the passenger door before I’d noticed him coming across the concourse. He wore jeans
and a V-neck jumper rather than uniform or the tracksuits of the rehabilitation unit. I noted a couple of young women queuing for a bus glancing at him. I felt a prickle of possessiveness even
though I wasn’t sure I had any remaining rights to feel like that. ‘You made me jump,’ I said, to cover my awkwardness.

‘Sorry.’ He was engaged with the dog, whose tail was flying around like a windmill. Hugh tried to push him onto the back seat so that he could get inside the car but Samson was
having none of it.

‘You’ll have to have him on your lap,’ I said at last. I felt flat. The dog so obviously had eyes for nobody except Hugh and Hugh had hardly spoken a word to me yet. And
I’d hardly greeted him with great warmth.

‘That’s OK.’ He bent to push his head down to the dog, crooning at him. The dog’s tail was moving so quickly it could have sliced cheese. I noticed that the hair had
grown back on the area of Hugh’s skull the shrapnel had cut. I didn’t dare glance down at his legs but he seemed to get into the car with only the slightest awkwardness. ‘Been
practising,’ he said. ‘Getting up and down as often as I can. This car is lower than the one I’ll be buying soon. I chose a small jeep because the seats are higher off the
ground.’

‘It’s great that you’ll be driving again.’

‘I had to sell the Cooper.’

I knew how much he’d loved that car.

‘But it’s great to have wheels again. Only short distances for now. In case I get migraines.’ He raised his fingers to the side of his head.

I had to bite my tongue to stop myself asking questions. Where he was living. What his plans for his future career were. Whether he intended to have a civilized talk with me about how we might
bring the marriage to an end. But I kept my eyes on the road. We didn’t speak. It would only take twenty minutes to get home when there was no rush-hour traffic but it already felt like the
longest journey I’d ever made.

‘It’s been ages since I was last here,’ Hugh said at last, lifting his head from the dog. ‘Before Afghanistan.’

Before Afghanistan. BA. Our new measurement of time. ‘Still pretty much the same as it was. Barring a few interesting developments.’ I told him how I’d tracked the reborn doll
to a parent’s address, but she’d denied any knowledge of it.

‘Weird stuff,’ was all he commented.

I turned off the main road and pulled into the drive. ‘The place looks good,’ he said. And it did. The colour of the trees lining the drive was a few weeks past its best but enough
of the golden and red leaves remained to be striking. ‘We missed this so much out in Helmand. The colours, the soft light. Sometimes, at dawn and dusk, you get the most wonderful light out
there, though.’

‘Afghanistan looks monochrome when you see it on the TV news.’ Dun-coloured, arid, dusty. The kind of landscape humans weren’t designed to inhabit.

‘You still watch it?’

‘Afghanistan?’ I shook my head. ‘But I once looked on a Google map to see where you . . . where . . .’

‘Where it had happened.’ His voice was neutral. Perhaps he’d gone past the stage of even feeling emotional when he discussed the explosive device.

‘The landscape didn’t look very inviting.’

He laughed. ‘The mountains can be stunning, in its defence. And the irrigated fields can be picturesque: fertile and full of fruit. And there are wonderful mosques and forts in Herat. They
produce good pottery and glass there, as well.’ He looked down at the small rucksack he’d brought with him. ‘But the part we were in didn’t have much going for
it.’

I swung the car round into the stables. Once, I reflected, this courtyard would have been full of the sound of horses’ hooves and grooms whistling and talking, the clink of tack, the
sweeping of brushes in the stalls. Now it was quiet and neat with its planted urns of red geraniums. I wasn’t sure why this somewhat lonely thought had struck me just now. Hugh was looking
around in silence. ‘Do you remember these old stables? I’m in the grooms’ apartment above.’

‘I remember your father converting it. Just as I first went out to Afghanistan.’

We got out. I kept my eyes on the front door so that I didn’t have to observe him negotiating the car door. The stairs up to the apartment were broad and shallow. My mother had thought
carefully when they’d had it converted, installing handrails on each side of the stairs so that they would be able to manage them in older age. She’d seen herself as older and frailer
but still living here. Nobody could have believed that she’d be in her grave by her sixty-third birthday. Sixty-three was young.

‘This is me.’ I unlocked the upper door. He gazed around at the bare walls. ‘Haven’t had time to sort things out properly yet,’ I said.

‘Me neither.’ He glanced at me.

‘Coffee?’

‘Great.’ He followed me out to the kitchen. Samson flopped into his bed underneath the worktop with a sigh of content. Both the people he loved most under the same roof again.
I’d bought a new tin of the coffee Hugh had always preferred. The lid was impossible to unscrew. He held out a hand for it. I wondered how he’d manage with that maimed left hand of his
but his strength was still there. ‘Just a fortnight ago that would have had me foxed,’ he admitted, handing the tin back. ‘Though I’m right-handed it’s amazing how
much you rely on the other hand for grip.’

I handed him a mug. ‘We could sit, if —’

‘No.’ A flash of something furious in his eyes. ‘I don’t need to sit. I’m quite capable of standing like everyone else.’

‘I wouldn’t mind sitting down.’ I felt weary. It was often like this at half-term. ‘I’ll make the coffee first.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘I’m like an explosive myself. This injury’s left me paranoid. I think everyone’s out to get me. Or that
they’re implying I can’t cope.’

‘That’s understandable, that you should think like that, I mean.’ I was worried he might think I meant it was understandable people should imply he was paranoid.

‘Other people aren’t like this. Other survivors.’

‘Someone tried to kill you. That would make me feel uncertain about other humans.’

He gave me a long look. ‘Yes, that’s exactly how it feels. Someone tried to kill me. And they killed two of my men.’ His eyes narrowed. My heart felt like melted toffee,
knowing how this must hurt. ‘It makes me furious, Meredith. But the anger seems to want to come out in the wrong places.’ I remembered the fury he’d shown in the rehabilitation
unit and tried not to show this memory in my face. But it must have been there. ‘There’s so much I need to say to you.’

‘You don’t have to.’ I felt scared, even though I’d waited for such a moment for so long. Something bitter flooded my taste buds. I didn’t think I’d be able
to drink the coffee.

‘I’d like to.’

‘I think you really will have to let me sit down, then.’

He grinned. We sat opposite one another in the sitting room. I wondered if he’d noticed how sparsely I’d furnished it, as though I wasn’t sure I’d be here for long.
‘I said awful things to you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You were far and away the last person who deserved them.’ He didn’t say he hadn’t meant what he’d
said, though. ‘When I heard you’d left the camp and given up your old job and come back here I felt . . . well, I was appalled that I’d had that effect on you. You liked that
school. You were doing so well there.’

‘I don’t mind this one.’

‘Of course not. But you wouldn’t have come back here if what happened hadn’t happened.’

‘I was probably due a change of school. And with Mum dying it was as well I was here.’

‘I still can’t believe she’s gone.’ And his face fell under a shadow. But we were skirting round the topic. I told myself not to make it too easy for him; something told
me that wasn’t what he wanted from this meeting. He needed to say what was on his mind without me pushing him off course.

‘I’ve caused you grief and I’m truly sorry.’ He paused. ‘But I just don’t know how we go forward. I don’t know what you want to do. Or what I want to do
either. I feel as if I’m not the person I was before the bomb. It’s changed me. I want to spend some time getting to know myself again. It’s selfish, I know. They’ve taken
me off some of the drugs I was taking earlier on. That’s made me feel calmer but I’m still not right.’

‘I wouldn’t want to stop you doing anything you wanted to do.’ My voice sounded tight. ‘I’d want to help you.’

‘I’ve seen what happens to some wives of injured servicemen. It’s like having a child to look after. Today’s a good day. Not all of them are like this. My leg is still
painful. Most nights I find it hard to sleep. During the day all my thoughts are concentrated on doing what is necessary to keep me on this.’ He raised his leg a little, with a grimace.
‘You don’t know how many physio sessions and how many days’ rest this trip has taken.’

‘Are you saying’ – I took a breath – ‘that it’s over?’ Better to get this bit out in the open. No point letting it hang over us.

He hesitated. ‘I’m not saying that. But I can’t go off again and leave you hanging on waiting for me. That’s not fair. I think you should decide what you want to do,
independent of what I may or may not decide I want.’ His voice softened. ‘You’re only twenty-nine. Too young to be kept dangling.’

‘But do you’ – I struggled to control my voice – ‘still love me?’

He took his time again. ‘When I was travelling here I kept telling myself I didn’t. It was what I’d been telling myself at times in the unit.’

I willed myself to keep my face impassive.

‘But as soon as I saw you in the car waiting for me, with Samson, it took me back to all those times you were there waiting for me to come home, of how I’d look forward to seeing
you. And of how I’d thought of you just before I’d passed out. And those feelings took me by surprise. The counsellor I’ve been seeing told me it might be like that but I
didn’t believe her.’

A counsellor. Thank God someone had sorted that out for him. ‘I was surprised at how I felt when I saw you, too.’ I said the words carefully.

‘You can’t have been looking forward to seeing me.’ His blue eyes met mine.

‘Not entirely.’ It was a relief to admit this. ‘But now I have seen you perhaps it’s a bit the same for me. I can’t see how we can go on like this. But on the other
hand,’ – I struggled for composure – ‘I can’t look at you and not have the old feelings for you. It’s still there.’ I touched my throat as though whatever
I felt for my husband was resident there.
Fool
, I scolded myself.
You shouldn’t have admitted so much. You’ve left him with all the emotional cards
.

‘So what do we do?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I need to think.’

He nodded. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come here today but I felt I had to apologize. And try and explain. Why I’m the way I am now, I mean.’

‘You don’t need to explain.’

‘I thought I’d been out of it all the time since the bomb went off.’ He focused on a spot above my head. ‘But there is something I remember, or think I do. When they were
loading me onto the Globemaster plane at Camp Bastion I think I regained consciousness briefly. I thought I was in the belly of a big grey whale. And the lines and tubes going into me were fishing
lines. I thought I was a fish that a whale had eaten. Then a nurse stroked my hand and told me I was coming home. That I’d see you. And I felt a wave of, I don’t know, bliss. Exultation
because I knew you’d be waiting for me.’

‘Probably the drugs, inducing euphoria,’ I said. ‘Or adrenaline.’ I couldn’t let myself accept what he was saying. It would mean letting down my defences.

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ He dropped his head towards the dog, now lying over his trainered feet. ‘Could we take him for a walk?’

Samson raised his ears and whined.

We headed out towards the woods. ‘We can start off here and then wind round back towards the house,’ I said. ‘Dogs aren’t really allowed but you might like to have a
quick look at the place.’