The Songbird and the Soldier (4 page)

Sam carefully opened up the press and counted out the flowers she had saved there. Thirty-two. Good, that gave her one each for every child in her class and a few left over for mishaps, and knowing little Jimmy Richards there were bound to be mishaps. She had seen her flowers turned into crowns, fairies, the sun and endless footballs, but it was those with the imagination to see beyond the obvious that always excited her. She closed the press again and placed it onto her desk with her school diary and the verse she had written out about flowers to go on the classroom wall. She sat back down. “Do you want to go for a walk, Humph?” Humphrey was on his feet in a flash, his stubby little tail wagging eagerly. “Come on then, let’s get out of here.”

Dean called Sam once after he got back from training and Sam asked for his address out in Afghanistan, but despite him giving it to her, he was still too busy to catch up. The time passed when he was due to leave and Sam had heard nothing. She wrote, not too emotionally, as she was still a little unsure about whether he would actually get the letter and who else would see it on the way. There was no reply.

Nearly three weeks passed and still she heard nothing. In place of eager anticipation, she greeted the fall of the mail each day on the mat with the resigned habit of just checking.

On Wednesday, Sam had had a particularly wearing day in school. Jimmy Richards had been caught stealing another child’s tooth to try and extort extra money out of the tooth fairy. Bethany-May had managed to make her whole group of friends hysterical in front of a school inspector over a class pet hamster who had somehow been let out of his cage, (by whom she had yet to determine) and to cap it all off, Peter Davies chose that very same day to bring up his entire lunch all over Lucy Eccles’ lovely long hair.

Sam walked into the house and dropped her bike helmet and bag to the floor. Her mum walked out of the kitchen to greet her. “Oh. As bad as that, was it?”

“Worse.”

Sam’s mum ushered her inside and sat her down with a cup of tea while she heard all about Sam’s miserable day. She tried very hard not to laugh, but by the end of the tale even Sam could see the funny side of things and she felt a whole lot better. “It’s all right for you,” she said. “You only had one child to deal with, I’ve got 28 and Jimmy’s got to count for at least two.”

Mrs Litton laughed. “I’m sorry, dear, but you just couldn’t write the stuff you come home with,” she said, composing herself again.

“Something smells nice,” Sam said.

“Baked ham,” her mum told her.

Sam sniffed at her hands. “Ugh! I stink of sick.”

Mrs Litton smiled and told Sam to go for a nice warm shower and wash her hair as there was plenty of time before tea.

The following day, all was well with the world again. Mary Appleby had a nice shiny fifty pence piece from the tooth fairy, all the pets stayed safely contained and no one was sick over anyone else. Sam cycled home feeling much better about the world. Her job was great, she had a lovely family and the weather was finally starting to feel like spring.

Sam got in and hung up her things. She found her mum sat at the dining room table with the local paper spread out in front of her.

“Anything interesting?” Sam asked.

“There might be actually, yes.”

Sam walked around the table and looked over her mother’s shoulder. Mrs Litton pointed to a terraced house, on the other side of town, with a tiny front garden and next to a street light. Sam looked at the price and then read on.

“What do you think?” her mum asked.

“Well, yes. It looks okay, doesn’t it?”

“Shall we have a drive past and nose about this weekend?”

“Yeah, why not.” She grinned excitedly. Have you got anything sorted out for tea?” she asked.

“Not yet. Your dad rang a short while ago. He’s popping round to Uncle Gerald’s after work, to help him with his car, so it’s just the two of us tonight.”

“Great. Let’s get a Chinese. My treat.”

“What a good idea, but I’ll pay. You can pay when we go to your house for tea.”

Sam laughed. “I won’t be able to afford a Chinese once I’ve got my own place.”

“So, we’ll eat beans on toast. But tonight, I’m paying.”

Half way across the world, Andy was settling into life in theatre. It was a basic way of life, with few of the luxuries of modern living that most people take for granted. Boredom was commonplace and the food, by necessity, was uninspiring.

The vast expanse of sky had been the first thing to hit him when he stepped off the plane in Kandahar. It had been the middle of the night but the sky was clear and it was hung with a myriad of stars. The atmosphere had changed perceptibly en route, with the excitement of the beginning of the flight subduing by mid-flight and then replaced with a more contained sense of tension by the end.

The empty stretchers on the plane had been a chilling reminder of where they were heading. When they transferred onto the Hercules for the short stretch to Helmand, donning helmets and body armour for a blacked-out approach, the adrenaline had definitely begun to flow.

Camp Bastion, in northern Helmand, was the closest to civilisation they had, with its facilities and air-con pods, but it carried with it its own shadows. The hospital for all the casualties was based there too. But for now, home was a forward operations base to the south near Lashkar Gar.

This was a compound that had been deserted by fleeing locals during some fierce fighting a couple of years before. Andy looked around him at his fellow soldiers. They were all back safe. Relief was expressed in the whoops and cries of the men in his team as they dispersed to their various corners and took off their kits.

Andy checked in with the guys who had been on guard that day, to see if there had been any more contact while they were away. There hadn’t. He looked about him. Piles of water bottles were stacked up under a tarp in one corner and Andy wished he could dive in and bathe in every single one. He was filthy. Dust had got in everything. Mud caked around the bottom of his legs from crossing the drainage ditches and tacking in and out of the fields. It baked hard in the sun as he walked and added to the considerable weight he carried around with him. He took off his helmet and started to remove his body armour. Tomorrow was their turn to man the base while the other team ventured out, so he could wash his clothes in the morning and they would dry out in the heat of the day. He checked his rifle and made sure it was clean and then went in search of food.

The following day they took a delivery of mail, one of the highlights of the week for most of them, but Andy didn’t lose too much sleep looking forward to it. A letter from his mum every couple of weeks and the odd parcel was the most he could expect. However, if one of the lads happened to have a birthday while they were there, you never knew what treat might wing its way over to them.

He decided to take personal responsibility for distributing the mail that day. He wandered through the compound calling out the names and delivering the post to each in turn. Some men got loads. Andy assumed they must have a harem back home constantly writing to them, while others got only one or two. Where they were, they received deliveries of mail about once a week. In larger bases there was internet communication, but he knew from experience that those in other more remote posts had it worse. He shoved his letter from his mother into his pocket and carried on calling out the names.

In a shady, mud-floored room in the corner of the compound Dean answered his call. Andy walked in and handed over a bundle of letters. Dean thanked him and started rifling through his post to see who his letters were from. Spike looked over at the number of letters Dean had received and rolled his eyes. Andy handed Spike his letter from home and he lay back and began to read.

“How’s Sam doing?” Andy asked, turning back to Dean momentarily before studying hard the name on the next letter in his hand.

Dean looked up. “Shit, check this out, guys.” He held out a picture of a girl Andy did not recognise. She was a blonde girl wearing a bikini and posing provocatively. Dean snatched the photo back. “Hey, don’t wear her out! Spike.” He held the photo up for Spike to see.

“Got any of those going spare?” Spike asked.

“I’ll swap you for your sister.”

“On your bike.”

“Your sister is my bike.”

“Piss off!” Spike launched a dirty sock across the room and the lads laughed. “Cocky little shit!” he mumbled.

Dean grinned and threw the sock back. He looked back to Andy, still standing in the room. “What?”

“Are you and Sam no longer an item?”

Dean rifled through his things and pulled out a handful of old letters. “Oh, I’ve got one in here from her too somewhere…” He flicked through, flipped a letter over and read the back. “Yeah, here you go. This one’s from her.”

Andy’s guts twisted. He wanted to tear him limb from limb for treating Sam so thoughtlessly, but he knew he couldn’t say a thing. “Who else have you heard from?” Andy asked.

“Oh you know, Mum and Dad, Jules, two from Soph, a couple of mates. How about you?”

“Parents.”

“Never mind, Prof.”

Andy stiffened and looked back at the letters in his hand. He turned and called out the next name in the stack.

A little while later Andy found a shady spot up against a wall and pulled out the letter from his mum. His older brother, Simon, had got engaged to a girl called Helen from some rich family in London and they were going there to meet them in a couple of weeks’ time. - Andy remembered the day he had told his parents
he
was getting married. For once he had done something right and everyone seemed happy… for a while. – But back to the present: Simon’s business was thriving and he had just bought a new Audi to drive around town. His dad was apparently fine and the garden was looking lovely. Great. He put the letter back in his pocket and felt Sam’s letter lying there.

After lunch it was his turn to go on watch. He manned the lookout post with his binoculars trained on the tree line. His men were in position, covering all sides of the compound.

Privacy wasn’t a word synonymous with army life and the letter languished in his pocket for a few days. Eventually it was rescued from being ruined by being washed and hidden away in Andy’s box of personal things. Finally, Andy decided he had to take a chance and write to Sam. But what was he to say? How could he write a letter without hurting her feelings? It took him a few days of racking his brains before he came up with an idea.

April arrived and with it, at last, a letter from Afghanistan. Sam got home from work and her mother greeted her, smiling from ear to ear. She pulled out a blue envelope from behind her back and Sam’s eyes lit up. “He wrote!”

Mrs Litton handed her the letter. “Go on. Go up and read it. I’ll have a cup of tea ready for when you get downstairs again.”

Sam hung her coat and helmet on the rack behind the door and skipped off upstairs, excited to finally be hearing news back from Dean. Humphrey followed her up the stairs, barking eagerly. He panted and wagged his tail at her feet as she sat on her bed carefully opening the folded envelope. He barked loudly and got the attention he desired. “Come up, Humph,” she said and patted the bed. Humphrey hopped up on to the bed beside her and rested his head on her lap. “It’s Dean,” she told him. “Let’s see what he has to say after all this time.”

Sam started to read and then checked the name at the bottom of the letter. She was confused. She checked a second time and then began to read again from the beginning. When she had finished she was at a loss as to what to make of it. She stared at the wall for a few minutes, trying to work through her thoughts. Eventually, she got up and took the letter downstairs. Humphrey seemed happier to stay where he was.

Sam found her mum in the living room, with the biscuit barrel open and a hot cup of tea waiting on the little table beside the settee. Sam walked over to her mother and handed her the letter. “What do you make of this?” she asked and took a seat by the cup of tea.

Mrs Litton’s brow furrowed in concern. She put down her cup of tea, reached for her glasses and started to read.

Mrs Litton looked down at the address on the back of the envelope. “Sergeant?” she said. She lay the letter down in her lap and looked at Sam. She took a deep breath and said nothing.

“I know,” Sam said. She had no idea what to think, or even how to feel. On the one hand she felt abandoned, foisted off onto the next available soldier as if one was just as good as the next. On the other hand, did that mean that Dean was in far more danger? He couldn’t write to her at all? Sam racked her brain for an explanation. Keeping in touch had never been Dean’s forte, it was true, but…

It occurred to her then that she may have just been dumped. Was this how soldiers did it? Passed you on to the next guy? How was she meant to feel about that? She liked Dean: he was charming and handsome and he made her laugh- but he was very unpredictable and definitely not reliable. But she did like him, a lot. If she’d known some of the other wives and girlfriends at the barracks, or The Patch, as they called it, she might be able to get some answers, but Dean never took her there, not once. Army life was still a foreign language to her. At least she could be pretty sure whatever he was doing, he wasn’t cheating on her.

“Do you know this Andy Garrington?” her mum asked.

“Sort of. I met him a couple of times with Dean.”

“What sort of chap is he? Is he nice?”

“Mum!”

“Not like that. I mean kind, considerate, that sort of thing, or was he, you know, laddish?”

“No, he seemed nice, quite quiet. Do you think he’s dumping me?”

“Who, Andy?”

“No, Dean.”

“I don’t think you could say that, not without something more… direct. But it’s strange, I’ll give you that. What are you going to do?”

Sam walked over and took back the letter. She shook her head. “I don’t know. It feels wrong to write to someone else, like I’m being unfaithful or something.”

“Yes, I can see that, but maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. This chap… Andy might not have anyone else to write to. You two could be like pen pals.”

“But what would I say to him?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Talk to him about your day, what the weather is doing, just pretend he’s another girl. It probably doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s the receiving of a letter, when somebody’s taken the time to write to you, that’s the special bit, not what they’ve actually written.”

“Mm, maybe.” Sam could see the sense in this, but it still felt very odd.

“Sleep on it. You don’t have to decide right now.”

Sam thanked her mum and went back upstairs, grabbing a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the biscuit barrel on the way. She still had plenty to do before school the next day.

That night Sam lay in bed thinking about the letter. If Dean had been sent to a remote outpost, why hadn’t he sent word before he left, or called? She tossed and turned on this matter for an hour or more and in the early hours of the morning found herself at her desk. It was cold in the night. The heating had long since gone off and Sam wrapped her fluffy dressing gown around her and hugged her knees up to her chest. She had a pile of forces’ blueys in her desk drawer just waiting for an excuse to be used. She picked one out and began to write.

The next day she posted it and then worried that she had done the wrong thing. She had assumed it was all over but just under a week later Sam received a second envelope.

Sam felt a quiver of excitement ripple through her, like a schoolgirl with a new boyfriend, a new boyfriend she couldn’t tell anyone about. She reminded herself that he was not actually her boyfriend, merely a pen pal that she was writing to while she waited to hear where she stood with Dean. She pulled out a fresh bluey from her drawer and poised over it for a minute, deciding what to say, and then she put pen to paper.

Sam folded up the big blue page stuffed with writing and hurried off to the post box at the end of the road to send it.

On Sam’s birthday the girls met up at Kate’s house to go ice-skating. They packed into Chloe’s red Polo and drove off to the edge of town. Inside it was chilly. They strapped themselves into the uncomfortable boots and tottered over to the gate. At first they were all a bit unsteady. It had been a while since they had stepped out onto the ice. Sam and Kate held onto the edge on their first time round, but a few circuits in, they were finding their balance, some more than others, and they began to glide around with not too many bumps and scrapes.

After forty minutes they came sailing off for a drink at the side. They clomped across the rubber mats to the café at the end of the rink and sat down. Sam was enjoying herself immensely and had a big smile on her face.

“You seem unnaturally happy tonight,” Chloe said. “Have you won the lottery, or something?”

Sam shook her head. “No. I’m just having fun. It
is
my birthday.”

Kate looked at Sam. “No. She’s right. There’s something else. You’re not normally this chirpy.”

“Are you saying I’m normally a miserable cow? Thanks very much, guys.”

Kate licked her lips and looked at Sam. “It’s a guy, isn’t it?”

Sam didn’t say a word.

“You haven’t finally heard from Dean, have you?”

Sam shook her head. “No.”

The girls waited to see if Sam would spill. They watched her face in silence.

Sam felt the weight of expectation on her. She was desperate to tell them all about Andy, but what would they think? Surely she was being a complete bitch? Or was she doing the right thing? She hesitated on the brink of speaking for many moments and then she cracked. She pulled a pained face. “There is somebody.”

“Go girl! I never thought you had it in you.” Kate said, loudly.

“What about Dean?” Chloe asked.

“Oh bugger Dean,” Kate shot in, “he’s been crap anyway. Tell me everything.” Her eyes shone with excitement.

Sam took a deep breath and told them about the letter. Both girls agreed it was odd, but after a quick recap through Dean’s lack of boyfriend-like communication even before he left, they quickly lost interest in the moral dilemma and wanted to know about Sam’s new man.

When Sam told them the name of the other guy Kate sat back in her chair. She nodded in understanding. “Yep,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘yep’?” Sam asked.

“Oh you have to have seen that coming? Not the disappearance of Dean, I mean, but Andy.”

Sam and Chloe looked puzzled.

Kate sighed and leaned forward on the table.

“Why did I say I walked out of the date we had a few months back?”

Sam wracked her brains. “It was something to do with your mum, wasn’t it? No, wait, you thought he liked me more than you, didn’t you? But-”

Kate was shaking her head impatiently. “He couldn’t take his eyes off you. I told you. Andy, that is. I might as well have turned up butt-naked with ‘shag me witless’ tattooed across my arse. He wouldn’t have noticed.”

Sam was stunned. Her mouth fell open. “Do you think I should stop writing to him?”

“Hell no! He’s a hot guy who’s actually paying some attention to you, instead of leading you a merry dance. Don’t you dare stop writing to him.”

“But what about Dean? He is still my boyfriend, technically. And what if he
is
stuck out somewhere where he can’t write to me?”

“He may not be able to get online, but I seriously doubt he can’t do anything.”

“What’s he like then, this new chap?” Chloe asked.

Sam’s heart fluttered and her eyes lit up. “I don’t know. But I get this feeling about him that I can’t explain. He’s nice.” She smiled despite herself.

“Nice is good. It makes a change for you.”

Sam gave Chloe an offended look. “Yeah, all right. I know. I’m rubbish when it comes to men.”