arrived breathlessly and grabbed the last meal.‘Won’t you see him in the morning?’ asked Asma.‘They’re leaving at 0400. So I kissed him goodbye. In a sangar.’Asma raised her eyebrows.‘Just a minute. Last time I asked you if you liked him you said yuck, yuck, yuck.’Jean blushed. ‘Well, I still think he’s a bit yuck. But they’re going away to this flimsy camp made out of barbed wire for a whole week. And right after we’ve shot the local warlord. So I thought I should kiss him in case he doesn’t come back.’Asma shrugged and said nothing.‘You’re not saying goodbye to Gordon, then?’‘Nope.’‘He came in here earlier. He was looking around for you, I’m sure.’Asma stabbed her food with her fork.‘He can look all he likes. I’m still fucking angry with him.’Jean caught her eye.‘Asma. You’re angry with the British Army for shooting your bonny blue-eyed boy and you’re taking it out on Gordon. And why on earth did you have to bring farmhouses and polo into it?’Asma put down her fork and sighed.‘I shouldn’t have said that. I really had a go at him just because he’s posh. So I expect he thinks I’m jealous.’‘Are you?’‘I wouldn’t want his big house and all his fields and horses. What would I do with them? I can’t even imagine going home and meeting his mum. For drinks in the drawing room. I just couldn’t do it, Jean.’‘You’re prejudiced,’ said Jean.‘I am not.’‘Has he invited you home to meet his mum?’‘Well . . . yes.’‘Asma, you’re a sad cow. He’s got over his prejudice. You just can’t get over yours.’But Asma shook her head.‘I don’t buy into their crap. I don’t buy into who they are or how they think. I know he was a bit wahabi and probably a Pashtun nationalist and you thought it was suspicious the way he rubbished the local shrine, but you can say what you like about Asad, he probably had more in common with me than Gordon does.’In the night, when she woke up and heard the first men up preparing for their departure, Asma felt a small twinge of guilt and regret. She turned over. She tried to go back to sleep.Then she remembered that Asad was dead and she felt a renewed surge of anger. Someone who had never met him and didn’t understand his cause had ordered his death and the SAS had appeared from nowhere and shot him and had now evaporated back to Hereford.Probably the suspicious officers, Gordon Weeks among them, would offer a different interpretation but she knew that, in the meetings with Asad, human relationships nurtured on the carpet over cups of sweet tea had triumphed briefly over weapons. And what had they done? Shot him.She had not been inside a mosque for many years and she looked on Islam with the cold distance of a divorcee. She was a member of the British Army. No one had coerced her into joining. But the British Army had killed Asad. For the second time on this tour she had the uncomfortable feeling that she had personally shot her Moslem brother.She did not open her eyes but lay in bed listening for the sound of the departing convoy.
Chapter Forty-eight
DAVE DID NOT SLEEP. HE MANAGED TO GET HIS HANDS ON THE satellite phone when it was still only ten thirty at night in the UK.Sure that the hospital would have sent Jenny home by now, he dialled his own number first.‘Nope. Still there.’ Trish sounded sleepy. ‘And she’s getting a bit miserable on that hospital food. I took her in something tasty tonight to tickle her appetite but she’s gone right off everything.’‘That’s what she did towards the end when she was pregnant with Vicky,’ said Dave. But Trish, as always, knew better.‘She had a good diet throughout that pregnancy. No, Dave, I’m afraid that something’s very wrong if Jennifer’s off her food like this.’Knowing that Trish would not be happy unless something was very wrong somewhere, Dave rang the hospital. This time he got through to the ward.‘We don’t normally give the phone to patients after four in the afternoon,’ said the nurse. ‘This is extremely late to call.’‘But I’m her husband.’‘Most husbands get here during visiting hours.’She sounded prim and disapproving.‘I’m not most husbands. I’m on the other side of the world. I’m in Afghanistan and I’d like to talk to my wife.’‘Can’t you phone during our normal hours?’‘Well,’ said Dave, ‘I suppose I could try having a word with the Taliban to arrange a little ceasefire during your visiting times . . .’‘All right, all right,’ said the nurse. ‘But please try to respect hospital rules in future.’Dave gritted his teeth and waited a long time. Finally a small, sad voice he hardly recognized came on the line.‘Daaaaave!’Oh, shit, she was crying.‘Stop crying,’ he said. When soldiers cried, as they occasionally, unaccountably and ashamedly did while fighting, his policy was to grip them immediately. Stop crying, he would say in a brisk voice, get yourself together, focus and do a professional job out there.But with Jenny he couldn’t even manage the brisk tone. And the other stuff, about focusing and being professional, didn’t really apply. He stood out under the Afghan stars, the phone pressed to his ear, listening to a woman crying in Wiltshire. The base and his mates and the lads suddenly weren’t here. Just the stars and the sound of Jenny’s sobs.‘Jen, tell me how you’re feeling,’ he said at last.Her sobs eased a bit.‘Fucking awful. I told them to induce me just to get it over with but they thought I could go a little bit longer and every bit longer I go on is better for the baby.’‘But you’re important too.’‘Jenny isn’t here any more. She’s been replaced by a big swollen-up monster who can’t move her feet or her hands and whose head’s going to explode any minute.’‘Oh, shit, I wish I was with you.’ He had a horrible feeling that was all he ever said to her these days.She was crying again now: ‘And there was a story on the news tonight about some soldiers who shot some poor little Afghan children and . . .’ Pause for sobs. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’‘No, love. We give them sweets.’‘Oh. That’s OK then.’‘They probably got shot because some poor little Taliban fighters were using them as human shields.’But she was crying again now.‘Look, I can’t help it, Dave. People get emotional before they have babies. And I know you hate it when I’m like this and I know you want me to be strong and sensible and make it all right that you’re away but just now it’s not all right, Dave, it’s not, not, not fucking all right!’Dave suspected that Jenny was sharing this one not just with him but with Nurse Prim and an entire ward of large-bellied women, all nodding in agreement.‘You’ve got to leave the army! You’ve got to. Because it’s bloody awful being looked after by your mum like all the girls who don’t know who the father is. The family men should be here with their families.’‘Stop, Jen. You know I love you and you know I want to be there. But I can’t. And I have to go away for a few days. So I won’t be able to phone. I feel terrible about it. You know what this is doing to me.’‘You! You! What do you think it’s doing to me? You never even ring!’‘I do but they don’t pick up the phone on your ward or they pick up and then cut me off. I do my best.’Like shattered glass, she was breaking into sobs again.‘Oh, Christ,’ said Dave. ‘If thinking about someone can help and caring about someone can help, then that’s what I’m doing, OK? Thinking about you and loving you and Vicky and the baby and caring about you. But I won’t be able to call you. So please, please try to calm down and relax just for me so you don’t have pre-eclampsia any more and you can go home. Don’t for God’s sake have the baby when I can’t even speak to you.’Now she was inconsolable. He held the phone away from his ear while she cried and cried. His Jenny, his strong, determined Jenny, was awash with hormones and at the mercy of her blood pressure. She had turned into this shouting, sobbing wreck.‘Can I talk to the doctor? Or even that nurse?’ he asked her. But she could not hear him over her tears.When the call ended he thought of putting in a request for compassionate leave. It might even be granted. But that would mean deserting his men out here, and deserting them just before a dangerous five-day operation. It would be like a snake shedding a skin. He didn’t want to do it.‘Er . . . Sarge . . .’ said a small voice.Dave opened his eyes. He realized he had been gripping the phone as though it was about to run away. He saw Mal standing there, waiting for him.‘Sorry, Bilaal,’ he said. ‘You want the phone?’‘Nah, Swift’s next . . .’Mal gestured into the well of darkness where Swift stood, barely perceptible.‘Here,’ said Dave. ‘I’ve finished now.’‘Thanks, Sarge,’ said Swift, taking the phone and stealing off into the night with it. Everyone had a favoured private phone spot, somewhere the signal was strong enough and he could fool himself he was alone. Then at the end of the call there would invariably be someone waiting silently to take it. You could never be alone in an FOB.Dave expected Mal to evaporate just as Swift had, but instead he stayed nearby.‘What’s up with you, Mal?’ asked Dave. ‘1 Section don’t even have to get up yet. Can’t you sleep?’‘No,’ said Mal.Dave felt weary. Right now he needed to walk through the quiet night and think about Jenny and instead he would have to talk to Bilaal.‘Want to help me carry ammo and talk?’‘Yeah, great, Sarge, good.’ Mal sounded nervous. He was a skinny lad with a lot of nervous energy. Whenever a battle was starting Dave could hear Mal clearing his throat over and over again. He often giggled as he fired. And if he had told Mal either of these things he would be amazed.Dave wondered if Mal was going to start talking about some woman problem. Whenever 1 Section stopped for a brew, Mal would be talking about women. He was obsessed, as though he had only just discovered their existence.‘Sarge, you know I’m a Moslem?’Dave was so surprised that he stopped. This was already not sounding like the kind of conversation you have loading ammunition. ‘Well . . . yes. But I don’t see you dropping down on your knees every time you hear the call to prayer.’‘I was brought up Moslem. We were never, you know, devout. But I’ve always been on a Friday.’‘To the mosque?’‘Well, yeah, but, I mean, I’m normal too. After the mosque, I go out clubbing.’‘Normal means lots of different things to lots of different people.’ Dave was curious to know where this conversation was leading. He realized he preferred to talk to one of his men about something that was bothering him than think about his phone call to Jenny. Because no matter how important what was going on at home, it was so far away that you could always find something much nearer to eclipse it.‘This Moslem thing, I sort of hide it, know what I mean?’ asked Mal,
