War Torn

Chapter Twelve

DAVE DIALLED HOME ON THE SATELLITE PHONE. WHEN IT connected he listened to the ringing tone without hearing it. His head was ringing already from the bollocking he’d just given Riflemen McCall and Bilaal.Mal shouldn’t have left the shotgun. But Dave knew he’d been overcome by the cannabis plants. For Chrissake, he’d fallen asleep himself.But there was no such excuse for Angry McCall’s dash to save the shotgun. It was so insane that, deep inside, Dave couldn’t help admiring the lad’s bravery and commitment to a friend. Especially since that friend had recently been merciless in his criticism of Angry’s own mistakes.Dave had threatened to send Angus home, threatened anything he could think of, and the huge lad had hung his head and bitten his lower lip in silence.‘You said you were going to prove yourself,’ Dave reminded him. ‘And you will. But today you didn’t. I’m putting you on shit duties for a week.’He was just about to dismiss the lad when McCall said: ‘Sarge?’Dave waited, hands on hips.‘Sarge, I did it because I thought it was what my dad would have done.’ He looked up briefly, then back at the ground.Dave sighed. ‘You’ve got to learn to be your own man—’The phone’s insistent ringing snapped him back into the present. It was going on too long. Jenny should be at home because Vicky would be in bed. So why wasn’t she answering? The ringing gave him a hollow feeling. Had there been an emergency? No, he would have been told.This sound of the unanswered phone was a sound more empty than silence. He forgot Mal and Angry and with each ring his mind and heart were pulled a little closer to home. He was tugged back to England, to Wiltshire, to the camp, to his street, to his house and to Jenny, Vicky and their unborn baby. The journey made him tired and tense. He had reached that point in his absence when it was better not to think about them too much. And now he had gone all the way back for Jenny. And she wasn’t there.Dave held the phone to his ear even though the ringing had stopped. He was standing behind the place where soldiers washed their socks in the CQMS’s green bowls, behind the showers, behind the civilian area. Nobody was washing now but he could see a few socks and shirts and pairs of underwear hanging limp and forgotten in the Afghan darkness. This was the most private place he could get a signal to ring Jenny. He’d wanted to tell her he loved her. He’d meant to explain that the reason he didn’t phone more was that he tried not to think about her too much. Because too many home thoughts could make life here unbearable. He’d wanted to say all that. But she wasn’t there.

Jenny had put Vicky to bed. She was so tired she’d gone to bed herself soon afterwards. At first the ringing phone was a ringing phone in her dreams, reinforcing her sleep instead of disturbing it.Finally she was jolted awake. Her heart pounded. The telephone. And it must be the middle of the night. A night sound more ominous than silence. Maybe it was bad news. She tried to roll over to reach the receiver but she did not like to roll onto her pregnant belly. She had to shuffle to the edge of the bed instead.Just as she grabbed the receiver, the ringing stopped.‘Dave?’ she said. Even though she knew he’d gone. ‘Dave?’She heard her own voice in the empty room, talking to no one. She closed her eyes and turned on the light and when she opened her eyes the bedroom filled up the dark with familiar things. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t still dark really. One switch of the light and it would be there again.She dialled 1471. We do not have the caller’s number. It had certainly been Dave. She’d missed his call. She felt an acute sense of loss. She’d missed his call. She started to cry. She’d missed his call. God knows when he might get his hands on the satellite phone to ring again. There were times when he barely rang once in ten days and now she’d missed his call.And it would have been a close, intimate, night-time call when they might have said the things they were supposed to say, instead of the breezy daytime calls interspersed by shouting and chuckling from Vicky. She would have been able to tell him how she wanted him, no, needed him, to leave the army.She felt the heat of her tears as they ran down her face and onto the pillow.She hoped he’d call again. She lay awake, waiting. It seemed to her now that she’d spent the whole of her married life waiting for the phone and the reassuring sound of Dave’s voice. It also seemed to her that the other wives received more calls when the lads were away than she did. Leanne often got two calls in a week. So did Adi. At this thought, her tears flowed faster.Try again, Dave! she thought, and she thought it so hard that maybe he would read her mind from the other side of the world.