Crossfire

4

The remainder of Sunday proved to be a quiet day at Kauri House Stables, with the human residents managing to stay out of arguing distance.

In the afternoon I ventured out into Lambourn, deciding to go for a walk, mostly just to get me out of the house but also because I was curious about how much the place had changed over fifteen years. I didn't intend to go very far. It had been only a week or so since I'd thrown away the crutches, and my leg tended to tire easily.

There were a few more houses than I remembered, a new estate of smart little homes with postage-stamp gardens having sprung up in what once had been a field full of ponies. But overall, the village was as familiar as it had been when I'd delivered the morning papers as a teenager.

And why wouldn't it have been? The previous fifteen years may have changed me a great deal, but it was a mere blink of an eye compared to the long history of human habitation in Lambourn.

Modern documented Lambourn dated from the ninth century when the church and village were named in the will of King Alfred, the mighty king of the Saxons, the only monarch of England to have ever been designated "The Great."

But Lambourn had a history that stretched back far further than medieval times. Numerous Bronze Age burial grounds existed on the hills just north of the modern village, together with The Ridge-way, the Stone Age superhighway that had once stretched from the Dorset coast to The Wash.

Nowadays, Lambourn and its surroundings were known as The Valley of the Racehorse, but the racing industry was a relative newcomer. First records show that racehorses were trained here in the late eighteenth century, but it was not until the arrival of the railway a hundred years later that Lambourn became established as a national center for racing, and jump racing in particular, to rival that at Newmarket. Trains enabled the horses to be sent to racetracks farther and farther from home, and hence a national sport was established.

But the major factor that made Lambourn such a wonderful place for horses was simple geology, and had nothing to do with man.

Whereas the rolling Berkshire Downs certainly lent themselves so ideally to the formation of the gallops and the training of the horses, it is what lay beneath the turf that made the real difference. The Downs, together with the Chiltern Hills, were created many millions of years ago, laid down as sediment in some prehistoric organism-rich sea. Billions and billions of primitive sea creatures died, and their skeletons drifted to the bottom, over time being compressed into rock, into the white chalk we see today. It is almost pure calcium carbonate, and the grass that grows on such a base is rich in calcium, ideal for the formation of strong bone in grass-eating racehorses.

I wandered down to the center of the village, past the Norman church that sometime in the twelfth century had replaced the earlier Saxon version. Even though I was not what was known as a "regular" churchgoer, I had been into Lambourn Church many times, mostly along with the other boys and girls from the local primary school. My memory was of somewhere cold, and that was not just because the temperature was always low. It was also due to the realization that people were actually buried beneath my feet, under the stones set in the church floor. I could recall how my overactive childhood imagination had caused me to shiver, as I did so again now.

I stopped and thought it anomalous that the bodies of those buried so long ago could still have such an effect on me, whereas the bodies of the Taliban, those I had so recently sent to their graves, seemingly had none.

I walked on.

The center of the village was mostly unchanged, although some of the shops had different names, and others had different purposes.

I went into the general store to buy a sandwich for lunch and waited for my turn at the checkout.

"Oh, hello," said the woman behind the till, looking at me intently. "It's Tom, isn't it? Tom Kauri?"

I casually looked back at her. She was about my age, with long, fair hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore a loose-fitting dark gray sweatshirt that did a moderate job of camouflaging the fairly substantial body beneath.

"Tom Forsyth," I said, correcting her.

"Oh yes," she said. "That's right. I remember now. But your mum is Mrs. Kauri, isn't she?" I nodded, and she smiled. I handed her my sandwich and can of drink. "You don't remember me, do you?" she said.

I looked at her more closely.

"Sorry," I said. "No."

"I'm Virginia," she said expectantly.

I went on looking at her, obviously with a blank expression.

"Virginia Bayley," she went on. "Ginny." She paused, waiting for a response. "From primary school." Another pause. "Of course, I was Ginny Worthington then."

Ginny Worthington, from primary school? I looked at her once more. I vaguely remembered a Ginny Worthington, but she'd definitely had black hair, and she'd been as thin as a rake.

"Dyed my hair since then." She laughed nervously. "And put on a few pounds, you know, due to having had the kids."

Virginia Bayley, plump and blond, nee Ginny Worthington, skinny and brunette. One and the same person.

"How nice to see you again," I said, not really meaning it.

"Staying with your mother, are you?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"That's nice." She scanned my sandwich and the can of drink. "Such a lovely woman, your mother. That's three pounds twenty, please." I gave her a five-pound note. "A real star round here." She gave me my change. "Real proud of her, we are, winning that award." She handed me my sandwich and drink in a plastic bag. "Lovely to see you again."

"Thanks," I said, taking the bag. "You too." I started to leave but turned back. "What award?"

"You must know," she said. "The National Woman of the Year Award. Last month. In London. Presented by the Prince of Wales, on the telly."

I looked blank. Had I really been so involved with my own life that I hadn't even noticed my mother receiving such an accolade?

"I can't believe you don't know," Ginny said.

"I've been away," I replied absentmindedly.

I turned away from her again.

She spoke to my back. "You can come and buy me a drink later if you like."

I was about to ask why on earth I would like to buy her a drink when she went on. "My old man has arranged a bit of a get-together in the Wheelwright for my birthday. There'll be others there, too. Some from school. You're welcome to come."

"Thank you," I said. "Where did you say?"

"The Wheelwright," she repeated. "The Wheelwright Arms. At seven o'clock."

"Tonight?"

"Yeah."

"So is it your birthday today?"

"Yeah," she said again, grinning.

"Then happy birthday, Ginny," I said with a flourish.

"Ta," she said, smiling broadly. "Do come tonight if you can. It'll be fun."

I couldn't, offhand, think of a less fun-filled evening than going to the pub birthday party of someone I couldn't really remember, where there would be other people I also wouldn't be able to remember, all of whom had nothing more in common with me than having briefly attended the same school twenty years previously.

But I supposed anything might be preferable to sitting through another excruciating dinner with my mother and stepfather.

"OK," I said. "I will."

"Great," Ginny said.

So I did.

The evening proved to be better than I had expected, and I so nearly didn't go.

By seven o'clock the rain was falling vertically out of the dark sky, with huge droplets splashing back from the flooded area between the house and the stables.

I looked at my black leather shoes, my only shoes, and wondered if staying at home in front of the television might be the wiser option. Perhaps I could watch the weekly motoring show and use it to bully my mother further over her car.

Well, perhaps not, but it was tempting.

I decided instead to find out if it would be possible to pull a Wellington boot over my false leg. I suppose I could always have worn only one boot while leaving the prosthesis completely bare. I don't think the water would have done it much harm, but the sight of a man walking on such a night with one bare foot might have scared the neighbors, to say nothing of the people in the pub.

I borrowed the largest pair of Wellies I could find in the boot-room and had surprisingly little difficulty in getting both of them on. I also borrowed my mother's long Barbour coat and my stepfather's cap. I set off for the Wheelwright Arms relatively well protected but with the rain still running down my neck.

"I thought you wouldn't come," said Ginny, as I stood in the public bar removing my mother's coat, with pools of water forming on the bleached stone floor. "Not with the weather this bad."

"Crazy," I agreed.

"You or me?" she said.

"Both."

She laughed. Ginny was trying very hard to make me feel welcome. Too hard, in fact. She would have been better leaving me alone and enjoying herself with her other guests. Her husband didn't like it either, which I took to be a good sign for their marriage. But he had no worries with me. Ginny was nice enough but not my sort.

What was my sort? I wondered.

I'd slept with plenty of girls, but they had all been casual affairs, sometimes just one-nighters. I'd never had a real girlfriend.

Whereas many of my fellow junior officers had enjoyed long-term relationships, even marriages, both at Sandhurst and in the regiment, I was, in truth, married only to the military.

There was no doubt that I had been, as I remained, deeply in love with the army, and I had certainly betrothed myself to her, "forsaking all others until death do us part."

But it seemed it wouldn't be death that would do us part: just the small matter of a missing foot.

"So what do you do for a living?" Ginny's husband asked me.

"I'm between jobs," I said unhelpfully.

"What did you do?" he persisted.

Why, I thought, didn't I simply tell them I was in the army? Was I not proud to be a soldier? I had been before I was injured. Wasn't I still?

"A banker," I said. "In the city."

"Recession got you, did it?" he said, with a slightly mocking laugh in his voice. "Your trouble was too many big bonuses." He nodded. He knew.

"You're probably right," I said.

There were seven of us standing in a circle near the bar. As well as Ginny and her husband, there were two other couples. I didn't recognize any of them, and none of the four looked old enough to have been at school with me.

One of the men stepped forwards to buy a round at the bar.

"Should I know any of these?" I said quietly to Ginny, waving a hand at the others.

"No, not these," she said. "I think the weather has put some people off."

I was beginning to wish it had put me off as well when the door of the pub opened and another couple came in, again dripping water into puddles on the floor.

At least I thought they were a couple until they removed their coats. Both of them were girls-more correctly, they were young women-and one of them I knew the instant she removed her hat and shook out her long blond hair.

"Hello, Isabella," I said.

"My God," she replied. "No one's called me Isabella for years." She looked closely at my face. "Bloody hell. It's Tom Kauri."

"Tom Forsyth," I corrected.

"I know, I know," she said, laughing. "I was just winding you up. As per usual."

It was true. She had teased me mercilessly, ever since I had told her, aged about ten, that I was deeply in love with her, and I had asked her to marry me. She had clearly filled out a bit since then, and in all the right places.

"So what do people call you now?" I asked.

"Bella," she said. "Or Issy. Only my mother calls me Isabella, and then only when I've displeased her."

"And do you displease her often?" I asked flippantly.

She looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. "As often as possible."

Wow, I thought.

Both Isabella and I rather ignored Ginny's birthday celebration as we renewed our friendship and, in my case anyway, renewed my feelings of longing.

"Are you married?" I asked her almost immediately.

"Why do you want to know?" she replied.

"To know where I stand," I said somewhat clumsily.

"And where exactly do you think you stand?" she said.

I stand on only one leg. Now, what would she say to that?

"You tell me," I said.

But throughout the whole evening, she never did answer my question even though, in a roundabout manner, I asked her three or four times. In the end, I took her silence on the matter to be answer enough, and I wondered who was the lucky man.

At ten o'clock, as people were beginning to drift away, I asked her if I could walk her home.

"How do you know I walked?" she asked.

"When you arrived you were too wet to have simply come in from the parking lot."

"Clever clogs!" She smiled. "OK. But just a walk home. No bonus."

"I've never heard it called a bonus before." I laughed. "No wonder all those bankers are so keen to keep their bonuses."

She also laughed, and we left the pub in congenial companionship but with her hands firmly planted in her coat pockets so there was no chance of me being able to casually take one of them in mine.

Part of me longed to be with a woman again, just for the sex.

It had been a long time. It was six months or more since I had talked a girl into my bed with stories of heroic encounters with a mysterious enemy, stories of men being men, sweating testosterone through every pore, and satisfying ten maidens each before breakfast. I was good at the game, but recent opportunities had been limited, almost nonexistent.

Six months was a long time, with only the occasional misplaced sponge by a blushing nurse to fulfill the need.

I positively ached to have a "bonus" with Isabella, even here, in the street, in the still pouring rain.

But there was little likelihood of that, and my chances weren't exactly helped when she suddenly stopped.

"What's that noise?" she asked.

"What noise?" I said, stopping next to her and dreading the moment.

"That clicking noise?" She listened. "That's funny. It's stopped now."

She walked on and I followed.

"There it is," she shouted triumphantly. "It's you, when you walk."

"It's nothing," I said quietly. "Just the boots."

I could see she was confused. I was wearing rubber boots. They would make no noise, certainly not a clicking noise.

"No, come on," she said. "That's definitely a sharp metal sound, and you've got Wellies on. So what is it?"

"Leave it," I said sharply, embarrassed and angry. In truth, more angry with myself for not saying than with her for asking.

But she wouldn't leave it.

"Come on," she said again, laughing. "What have you got down there? It's a toy, isn't it? Part of your chat-up technique?" She danced away from me, looking down, searching for the source of the noise and laughing all the while.

I had no choice.

"I've got a false leg," I said quietly.

"What?" She hadn't really heard and was still dancing around, laughing.

"A false leg," I said more loudly. She stopped dancing.

"I've only got one leg."

She stood still, looking at me.

"Oh, Tom, I'm sorry." I thought for a moment that she was crying, but it might have been the rain on her face. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."

"It's all right," I said.

But it wasn't.

Isabella stood in the street, getting wetter, if that was possible, while I told her everything I could remember about being blown apart by an IED and my subsequent medical history.

She listened, first with horror and then with concern.

She tried to comfort me, and I despised it. I didn't want her pity.

Suddenly I knew why I had come back to Lambourn, to my "home." I must have subconsciously understood that my mother would not have given me the lovey-dovey consoling parental hugs I would have hated. She would not have tried to be reassuring and sympathetic. And she would not have tried to commiserate with me for my loss. I preferred the Kauri "Get on with your own life and let me get on with mine" attitude.

Grief, even the grief for a lost foot or a lost career, was easier to cope with alone.

"Please don't patronize me," I said.

Isabella stopped talking in mid-sentence.

"I wasn't," she said.

"Well, it felt like it," I replied.

"God, you're awkward," she said. "I was only trying to help."

"Well, don't," I said rather cruelly. "I'm fine without it."

"OK," she said, obviously hurt. "If that's the way you feel, then I'll bid you good night."

She turned abruptly and walked away, leaving me standing alone in the rain, confused and bewildered, not knowing whether to be pleased or disappointed, angry or calm.

I felt as though I wanted to run, to run away, but I couldn't even do that, not without a cacophony of metallic clinking.

On Monday morning I went to Aldershot to try to collect my car and my other belongings out of storage.

Isabella came with me.

In fact, to be totally accurate, I went with her.

She drove her VW Golf in a manner akin to a world-championship rally driver.

"Do you always drive like this?" I asked, as we almost collided with an oncoming truck during a somewhat dodgy overtaking maneuver.

"Only when I'm not being patronizing," she said, looking at me for rather longer than I was happy with.

"Watch the road," I said.

She ignored me.

"Please, Isabella," I implored. "I don't want to survive an IED only to be killed on the Bracknell bypass by a lunatic woman."

She had phoned the house early. Too early. I had still been in bed.

"That Warren woman called for you," my mother had said with distaste when I went down to breakfast.

"Warren woman?"

"Married to Jackson Warren."

I'd been none the wiser.

"Who's Jackson Warren?"

"You must know," my mother had said. "Lives in the Hall. Family made pots of money in the colonies." She had sounded very old-fashioned. "Married that young girl when his wife died. She must be thirty years younger than him, at least. That's the one who called. Brazen hussy."

The last two words had been spoken under her breath but had been clearly audible nonetheless.

"Is her name Isabella?" I'd asked.

"That's the one."

So she was married.

"What did she want?" I'd asked.

"I don't know, do I? She wanted to speak to you; that's all I know."

My mother had never liked being in a position where she did not know everything that was going on, and this had been no exception.

"I didn't even know that you knew that woman." She'd said the words with a mixture of disapproval and nosiness.

I hadn't risen to the bait.

Instead, I'd gone out of the kitchen and into the office to return the call to Isabella.

"I'm so sorry about last night," she'd said.

"So am I."

"Please, can we meet again today so that I can apologize in person?"

"I can't," I'd said. "I'm going to Aldershot."

"Can't I take you?" she had replied, rather too eagerly.

"It's all right," I'd said. "I'll get the train from Newbury."

"No." She had almost screamed down the phone. "Please let me take you. It's the least I can do after being so crass last night."

So here we were, dodging trucks on the Bracknell bypass.

Everything I owned, other than my kit for war, had been locked away in a metal cage at an army barracks in Aldershot prior to the regiment's move to Afghanistan. Everything, that is, except my car, which I hoped was still sitting at one end of the huge parking lot set aside for the purpose within the military camp down the road from Aldershot, at Pirbright.

"Let's get my car first," I said. "Then I can load it up with my stuff."

"OK," she said. "But are you sure you'll be able to drive it?"

"No, I'm not at all sure," I said. "But I'll find out soon enough." It was something that had been worrying me. My Jaguar was an automatic, so at least there were only two pedals to cope with, but both of them were designed to be operated by the driver's right foot. I planned to use my false right for the accelerator, and my real left for the brake: two pedals, two feet, just like driving a Formula One racing car.

"But are you insured, you know, to drive with only one leg?"

"To be honest, I'm not really sure about that either, so I'm not asking. I had intended to cancel my insurance and to take the car off the road before I was deployed, but somehow I never found the time. It's been taxed and insured for the past five months without anyone driving it, so they must owe me something. And I haven't told the insurance company about being wounded."

She drove in silence for a while.

"Why didn't you just tell me you were married?" I asked.

"Does it matter?" she replied.

"It might."

"What exactly might matter: the fact that I'm married, or that my husband is more than twice my age?"

"Both."

"I'm actually amazed you didn't know already. Everyone else seems to. Quite the scandal it was, when Jackson and I got married."

"How long ago?" I asked.

"Seven years now," she said. "And before you ask, no, it wasn't for his money. I love the old bugger."

"But the money helped?" I said with some irony.

She glanced at me. It was not a glance of approval.

"You're just like everyone else," she said. "Why does everyone assume that it's all about his money?"

"Isn't it?"

"No," she said defiantly, "it's not. In fact, I won't get anything when he dies. I said I didn't want it. It all goes to his children."

"Are any of them your children too?" I asked.

"No." I could detect a slight disappointment in her voice. "Sadly not."

"You tried?" I asked.

"At the beginning, but not now. It's too late."

"But you're still young enough."

"I'm all right. It's Jackson that's the problem." She paused, as if wondering whether she should go on. She decided to. "Bloody prostate."

"Cancer?" I asked.

"Yeah." She sighed. "It's a bugger. The doctors say they've caught it early and that it's controllable at his age with drugs. But there are some, shall we say, unfortunate side effects."

She drove on in silence, swerving around a slow-moving truck just in time to avoid an oncoming car.

"Has he tried Viagra?" I asked.

"Tried it?" She laughed. "He's swallowed them like M amp;M's but still not a flicker. It's the fault of the Zoladex-that's one of the drugs. It seems to switch off his sex drive completely. That's the physical side; mentally he's as rampant as ever."

"I can see that would be a tad frustrating," I said.

"A tad? I'll tell you, it's extremely frustrating. And for both of us." She looked at me as if in embarrassment. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. Far too much information."

"It's fine," I said. "I'm really quite discreet. I'll only tell the Sunday papers if they pay me well."

She laughed.

"From what the Sunday papers said after our wedding, you'd believe that I only married him for the money and that sex between a twenty-three-year-old woman and a man nearing sixty was all in the imagination-his imagination, that is. What rubbish. It was the sex that attracted me to him in the first place."

I sat in silence, just listening. What could I say?

"I was eighteen when I first met him. He was fifty-four, but he didn't look it. He used to play golf with my dad every Sunday morning. Then one Sunday when Mum and Dad were away, he came round to make sure everything was OK. It seems Dad hadn't told Jackson he wouldn't be playing golf that week, at least that's what Jackson told me at the time, but I've since often wondered if it was true." She smiled. "Anyway, to cut a long story short, we ended up in bed together." She laughed. "And the rest is history, or in the papers, at least."

"Was Jackson married at the time?"

"Oh yes," she said. "With two children. They're both older than me. But his wife was already ill by then. She had breast cancer. I helped look after her for nearly three years until she died."

"Were you sleeping with him all the time?" I asked.

She smiled again. "Of course."

"But did you live in their house?"

"Not to start with, but I did for the last six months or so of Barbara's life. His son and daughter treated me as their kid sister."

"But did they know you were sleeping with their father?"

"They didn't exactly say so," she said, "but I think they knew. Their mother certainly did."

"What? Jackson's wife knew that he was sleeping with you?"

"Absolutely. We discussed it. She even gave me advice about what he liked. She used to say it took the pressure off her."

Annoyingly, at this point we arrived at Pirbright Camp, so I heard no more juicy Warren revelations.

Isabella remained in her car while I went into the guardroom to sign in.

"Sorry, sir," said the corporal behind the desk. "I can't let a civilian onto the camp without suitable ID."

"What sort of suitable ID does she need?" I asked him.

"A driver's license or passport," he said.

She had neither with her. I'd already asked.

"Can't I vouch for her?" I asked.

"Not without proper authority."

"Well, get the proper authority," I said in my most commanding officer voice.

"I can't, sir," he said. "You would have to apply to the adjutant, and he's away."

I sighed. "So what do you expect me to do?" I asked him.

"You can go in, sir, but you'll have to walk to get your car."

"But it's miles away." The park was at the other end of the camp.

"Sorry, sir," he said adamantly. "That's the security rules we've been told. No ID, no entrance."

I suppose it was fair. In the army one learned very early on that rules were rules. Security was security, after all.

"Can you please get me some transport, then," I said.

"Sorry, sir," he said again. "There's nothing available."

I stepped back and lifted my right trouser leg up six inches. "How am I going to walk to my car with this damn thing?" I lifted my foot up and down with its familiar metallic clink.

"Afghanistan?" the corporal asked.

I nodded. "IED. In Helmand," I said. "Four months ago."

"No problem, then, sir," he said, suddenly making a decision. "Just get the lady to hand this in when she leaves." He handed me a temporary vehicle pass. "Just don't tell anyone."

"Thanks," I said. "I won't."

False legs clearly brought some small benefit after all.

Funny how rules can be so easily ignored with the application of a modicum of common sense. Security? What security?

I found it was surprisingly easy to drive with a false foot. A few practice circuits of the parking lot and I was ready for the public highway. And I was much more confident about arriving safely at my destination with me driving with only one real leg than I had been in Isabella's VW with her driving with two.

She insisted on following me the nine miles from Pirbright to Aldershot.

"You might need help carrying your things," she'd said. "And you won't get much of it into that."

True, my Jaguar XK coupe was pretty small, but Isabella obviously had no idea how little I had acquired in the way of stuff during fifteen years in the army. I could probably have fitted it into my car twice over. But who was I to turn down the help of a pretty woman even if she was married?

We negotiated the busy Surrey and Hampshire roads without any mishaps and, surprisingly, without my Jag being overtaken by Isabella's dark blue Golf, although I was sure she was going to on a couple of occasions before she obviously remembered she didn't know the way.

"Is that all?" Isabella was amazed. "I'd take more than that on a dirty weekend to Paris."

I was standing next to two navy blue holdalls and a four-foot-by-four-inch black heavy-duty cardboard tube. Between them they contained all my meager worldly possessions.

"I've moved a lot," I said, as an explanation.

"At least you don't have to engage Bekins to shift that lot." She laughed. "What's in the tube?"

"My sword."

"What, a real sword?" She was surprised.

"Absolutely," I said. "Every officer has a sword, but it's for ceremonial use only these days."

"But don't you have any furniture?"

"No."

"Not any?"

"No. I've always used the army stuff. I've lived in barrack blocks all my adult life. I've never even known the luxury of an en suite bathroom, except on holiday."

"I can't believe it," she said. "What century is it?"

"In the army? Twenty-first for weaponry, other than the sword, of course, but still mostly in the nineteenth for home comforts. You have to understand that it's the weapons that matter more than the accommodations. No soldier wants a cheap rifle that won't fire when his life depends on it, or body armor that won't stop a bullet, all because some civil-service jerk spent the available money on a flush toilet."

"You men," Isabella said. "Girls wouldn't put up with it."

"The girls don't fight," I said. "At least, not in the infantry. Not yet."

"Will it happen?" she asked.

"Oh, I expect so," I said.

"Do you mind?"

"Not really, as long as they fight as well as the men. But they will have to be strong to carry all their kit. The Israeli army scrapped their mixed infantry battalions when they suspected the men were carrying the girls' kits in return for sex. They were also worried that the men would stop and look after a wounded female colleague rather than carry on fighting."

"Human nature is human nature," Isabella said.

"Certainly is," I replied. "Any chance of a bonus?"