I really need to buck the hell up. I clamber to my feet, stretch my arms above my head and brace myself, and run.
Dear Maeve,
If only you knew how many times I’ve written this letter, again and again. Trying to find the right words for you and for Kip. I want to write the letter that will do him justice, that will show you what I know you already know – what a great bloke he was, what a brilliant dad and husband, what a top mate.
I’m no good with words, never have been. I didn’t see the point in staying at school for exams, and so, when I joined up, I didn’t really have much going for me. I always wanted to be good at talking, like Kip was, especially when I met Stella. I would practise things to say to her, to woo her, like, and Kip would help me. He never ribbed me over it, or nothing. He just knew, he knew that I had fallen hard for a girl, and he helped me. He understood how much it meant to tell someone that you love them; he understood long before I met Stella. He loved you and Casey, more than anything.
I think that was the best thing about Kip: he could make you laugh, and get you going, and you knew he always had your back. But the thing about him we all loved was how kind he was. I remember this stray little dog kept following us on patrol, yapping and barking, giving away our position. The other blokes wanted to put her down, but Kip said no. He fed her little bits of biscuit so that she followed him. And he took her back to base, and trained her up. Not like the bomb dogs, or anything, but just to keep still and as a sort of mate to us all. She’d sleep on a different bunk every night. Kip had always planned to bring her home to you. Silky, he called her, because she had these soft, soft ears that stood right up if she sensed something was coming.
The main thing that I have to tell you is that his death was quick; he didn’t feel any fear or any pain. It happened on a routine patrol, one we’d done a number of times before, but no one was slacking off or not pulling their weight; that’s not how it works. Every man in the unit was on point. It was an ambush, simple as that. We try to prepare for everything we can. We were vigilant, careful, expert, but sometimes … you can’t account for everything. Silky stopped and her ears went up, and we stopped, and then it just hit out of nowhere. There was no time to react, no time to …
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STELLA
I turn the key in the lock and open the door very slowly.
It’s not raining but my hair is soaked with sweat. My muddy trainers are wet through; splashes of mud ricochet up my calves to my knees.
‘Hey.’ I walk into the living room. Vincent clearly hasn’t slept; the room smells of beer. This time he hasn’t tried to hide the drinking, and he is more than a little drunk.
‘Hey, that’s my girl.’ He toasts me with an empty can. ‘There she is!’
I have no idea what to say or how to say it.
He gets up, and then sits down again, rubbing at his leg.
‘Man, I’m wasted. What time is it, anyway?’
‘Coffee time?’ I suggest, and he nods, watching me as I go into the kitchen and pile three heaped teaspoons of instant into the biggest mug I can find, topping it off with a lot of sugar.
‘You came back, then,’ he says, when I return and hand him a coffee.
His eyes are swollen and red. I can see that he’s been crying, distressed, although I’ll never mention it.
Whatever it is that keeps him up at night, that makes him hate me for not hating him, has made him cry and cry until his eyes are raw. I long to reach out and touch, take him in my arms and rock him, and let him cry some more, but I can’t do that. I don’t have permission to do that any more.
‘Well, I do live here,’ I say easily instead, sitting down next to him, sliding a couple of beer cans onto the floor to make a space. ‘I don’t have anywhere else to go.’
Our mutual weariness fizzes in the air between us. I wonder if there is any small part of him that, like me, would just like to curl up in bed, together, with our arms around each other, and just sleep, and for a few sweet hours not think about anything at all – just be two people, together, keeping the outside world at bay. Oh, how I long to lean against him, to rest my head on his shoulder, to fall asleep to the sound of his heart beating. I let myself lean against him, more of a brush, really.
Vincent holds himself carefully, with the self-conscious deliberation of a person who is trying not to seem as drunk as they are.
‘I thought you might not come back, after what happened, what I said.’ He cannot meet my gaze. He looks so hurt and so damaged by this vacuum of understanding that we have somehow created between us. I wait for him to say more; I wait for him to be kind, and gentle, to tell me that he didn’t mean it. I wait for him to take it all back. With the greatest of effort, I lay down a building block, hoping he will follow suit.
‘It’s OK, you know. I understand,’ I say, leaning forward a little. ‘I know that you’re angry, and there are things that still trouble you. Things you don’t feel like you can say to me – I understand. But, Vincent, it’s a long road to recovery. It takes a long time. If you just let me—’
‘You have no idea what it takes,’ he says, putting his mug down. ‘You really don’t. You can say the words they’ve taught you to say in training. You can say them over and over again, but that doesn’t mean you’re up here.’ He taps his temple with two fingers. ‘If you were … You wouldn’t like it, or me, any more. If you were up here, you’d change your mind about sticking by me. It’s not just about getting used to this.’ He moves the stump of his leg in a jerking motion that would have once have been a kick. ‘Or learning to walk again, or looking in the mirror and seeing again and again the moment that my mates were killed imprinted on my skin for ever. It’s not even about any of that. You can’t understand. And you have no idea what it’s like, so please, just stop trying so fucking hard. It’s … it’s pointless.’
This is another moment, one of those moments that he’s designed to get me to leave. One day, the time will come when I do, I suppose. When he gets what he wants, if that’s really what he wants. But not today; today I am just too damned tired.
‘The thing is,’ I say carefully. ‘I don’t believe it is pointless. I don’t believe that – because if it was, I wouldn’t still want to try. Vincent, don’t you think, if we just spent some time together, to get to know each other again, almost from scratch, that maybe I could understand what it is that keeps you from sleeping at night?’
He doesn’t answer me, instead directing his gaze downwards. There isn’t even a shrug to indicate that he’s heard me.
‘Somehow we let ourselves drift apart – no, that’s wrong. Ever since you came home, we’ve been prising ourselves apart, moment by moment. Taking every little thing, every memory and emotion that bonded us together in the first place, and throwing it away. You can’t sleep, so you never come to bed; I can’t sleep without you, so I lay awake staring at the ceiling. You don’t want me around at night, when you get drunk and listen to music so loud you can’t hear yourself think.’
I pick up his beloved headphones, yanking the cord that runs to his record player out of the socket, in a bid to get him to look up. It works: he watches me as I wind the cord roughly around my fist, but still he doesn’t speak. I don’t know if it’s losing Issy, or talking to Grace. I don’t know if it’s knowing that the closeness, that love we had, is still there somewhere, and he is choosing to withhold it. But I refuse to do this any more. I cannot go on being silent.
‘So I only work nights,’ I say, tossing his headphones back onto the coffee table, forcing him to keep eye contact with me. ‘Walking out the door at exactly the moment when you start to fall apart. And suddenly it’s like we have revolving door lives – I come in, you go out – and it’s no wonder we don’t know what to say to each other as we pass by, because we don’t know anything about our lives now … We keep secrets from each other, but I think … do think that perhaps if we just let ourselves be side by side, then perhaps that might change. And if ther
e’s a chance for us to be together again, we should take it, shouldn’t we?’
Vincent picks up his mug of coffee, drinking it down in a few deep gulps despite the steam that is still coming off it.
‘Vincent, please – say something!’
He swallows, setting his mug down again.
‘Do you remember the day I proposed to you?’ he says, without looking at me. The memory leaps up at once, as bright as a new flame.
‘Of course I remember.’ I smile tentatively. ‘It was the happiest moment of my life. It was a bright day, so sunny, dazzling, and we’d had a long night, out all night. You were making me a cup of tea, watching me in bed, looking at the mess of my bedsit, and you said, “You wouldn’t last five minutes in the army – you never keep your kit in order.”’
Vincent’s smile is faint, but I know he remembers it exactly the way I do.
‘And you said, “Well, I told you that about me from the very start; I told you that I am a terrible slattern,”’ Vincent reminds me. ‘You were lying there in bed, not a stitch on. You looked … you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.’
It seems like an age ago that I felt so at ease in my body, and so certain of the way that Vincent saw me. When I think about it now, I can’t believe I ever felt that confident in his love for me, but I did. I was immersed in it, utterly secure in his desire for my soft, round belly and doughy thighs, for my breasts, so diminished by all the weight I’d lost, and my long tangle of hair. When I think about it, it seems like a dream.
‘“You are Mr Neat Freak,” that’s what I told you. And I said, “We are hardly compatible at all. I can’t think what you see in me.”’
The pressure of his shoulder against mine increases, just a little.
‘And I said, “I really don’t know except maybe that in bed we are the greatest. We make the best love that has ever been made anywhere, by anyone. We are sex champions of the world.”’
We both laugh as we remember – soft shy chuckles, not at all like the raucous giggles we shared back then, back when he struggled to set the tea he had made me in the small space where my bedside table wasn’t crowded with make-up and older tea cups and odd earrings, and where it was destined to go cold.
Now Vincent’s hand reaches for mine, and although we don’t speak, I know he is remembering everything I am, remembering what happened next. The touch of his fingers entwined in mine is spellbinding.
Sitting astride me, he’d taken my hands in his, bringing each set of fingers to his lips for kissing.
‘I want to marry you,’ he’d said.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I’d laughed. We’d been together for two years, but together in the same room for less than one of those.
‘I do, I want to marry you. I love you, Stella. Shall we get married?’
I’d pushed him off me, feeling suddenly vulnerable, and pulled the covers up over my breasts. I knew in that moment how much I loved him and, because of that, exactly how capable of hurting me he was, and I didn’t want him to joke about something that I hadn’t known meant so much to me.
‘Don’t mess with me,’ I’d said. ‘Don’t fuck about.’
‘Don’t you love me?’
‘Of course I love you, you moron,’ I’d told him. ‘You know I do, more than … I expected to. But, why now?’
‘I know blokes,’ he’d said. ‘Mates who have been killed, or fucked up. I’m going back, and before I go, I want to make sure that you’ll be OK, you know, if anything happens …’
I’d fought my way out from under him, scrambled across the bed.
‘Don’t be crazy,’ I’d said.
‘Shut up,’ I’d told him.
‘Just shut up. Nothing will happen to you; you’re invincible. And, anyway, you could just leave, just resign, and come home and get a different job, and we can get married when we are ready.’
‘That’s not exactly how it works.’ He’d reached for me and pulled me into his arms. ‘Besides, I want to go. It’s my job; it’s what I’m good at. But I don’t want to go without marrying you.’
‘Now, you mean, before you go back?’
He’d sat down and shrugged. ‘Yes. I mean, how long do you need to choose a frock, invite your family, whoever they are, and your friends? I’ve looked into it: we can get married in about six weeks down the register office. Big booze up in the pub over the road afterwards. You and me, officially Mr and Mrs Carey.’
‘You are so romantic,’ I’d laughed. ‘Except since I was a very little girl, I’ve had my heart set on the full fairy-princess job. I’ve made an album of ideas and everything. Great big puffy pink dress, six bridesmaids, a carriage that looks like a pumpkin …’
I’d let the look of horror travel a little further down Vincent’s face before I couldn’t contain my guffaws any more.
‘That’s why we can’t get married – you have no idea what I’m really like.’ I’d thrown a pillow at him. ‘You don’t really know anything about me. We’ve been together a long time, but apart for most of it. You’ve not met my folks. I’m still your hot new girlfriend; this is still the honeymoon period.’
He’d leaned over me, his fingers finding their way under the sheets, trailing down my thighs and in between.
‘I do know things about you,’ he’d said. ‘I know you like this.’
‘Sex champions doesn’t a great marriage make,’ I’d murmured, closing my eyes and sinking back.
‘Why not?’ Vincent had whispered as his lips traced their way between my breasts. ‘Why isn’t it enough? All the other stuff we can do after. Because whatever it is I don’t know about you yet, I know I’ll get to love it, or just not even care about it, because this makes us perfect for each other. Say yes. Say, “Yes, I will marry you, Vincent Carey, in six weeks’ time. I will be your Mrs.”’
And I’d said, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh God, yes.
Realising I’d closed my eyes as I felt the echo of that delicious moment in the pit of my belly, I open them again, and find Vincent watching me. He looks into my eyes, and I swim into his – that brightest of blue, those two pure perfect pools, welcoming the chance to drown in them.
‘The way I felt about you then, Stella,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to waste any time. I wanted you to be my wife, to be mine. I knew I was heading back to Helmand for another tour, and I wanted to know, before I went, that I had a wife at home. A proper family. I wanted it to be all right then. I wanted you, all of you, then. With your curly hair and your lovely hands, and your messy bedroom floor.’
‘And you got me,’ I say. ‘You got me. I said yes, and we got married at the first chance we had. There was no pumpkin coach; just you and me, and your mates, and my parents, and some of the girls from work, a lot of confetti and the pub afterwards. We did it; we made our own family. We started it, anyway. We were so happy, Vincent, weren’t we? We can be like that again, can’t we? Are you really telling me that we can’t be happy like that again?’
‘Yes,’ Vincent says, not unkindly. ‘I am. I’m telling you that we can’t ever be happy like that again, Stella, and that’s what you don’t get. We got married when we hardly knew each other. We’ve never really known each other. The man you married, the man you care for, he’s gone. He won’t come back. Not ever. I’m not him any more, Stella. I can learn to walk and run and ride a bike again. But the one thing I can’t do is learn to love you, or any one. Not ever again. That part of me went in the incinerator along with my leg. If you stay here and try to love me, and try to make me happy or wait for me to make you happy, it won’t happen. I can’t ever be like I was. And you, you’re not like you were, either. And I don’t know if we can even live together, let alone be in love with each other, when we are two different people – two such different people from the ones we were when we first met.’
‘Yes,’ I insist, because I don’t know how to stop insisting. ‘Yes, we can. Because I still love you.’
He says nothing, but a noise, exasperated, raw and painful,
sounds somewhere in his chest.
‘Look, you haven’t slept, you’re barely sober. We both need some rest. We need some time out from this life. What if we take a walk down the road? Go to the Turkish place like we did every night for a week when we first bought this house? What if we have a drink and just talk – not about what’s happened, not about anything. We can just talk about nothing, the way that we used to. Just be together. I’d really like that, Vincent. We could just take a break, couldn’t we – from hurting each other – and just have a date, be together and see what that feels like?’
‘You’ve been running,’ he says, suddenly focusing on me.
‘Yes.’ For some reason I touch the toe of my trainer, as if for good luck. ‘I run every day to work and back; it’s why I’ve got so skinny. I don’t know why I haven’t told you before. It’s not like you couldn’t still run rings around me. I run, I run a lot. It … helps me cope with missing you.’
There’s a moment of silence. I see the muscles in his jaw tighten – I’m not sure if it’s grief or anger – and then a kind of exhaustion that sweeps through his body in one long continuous visible wave. For the moment, at least, he is defeated.
‘I hate hurting you,’ he sighs. ‘I’m tired of hurting you. OK. We’ll go out to that Turkish place tonight. We’ll eat and have a glass of something. That sounds nice. I really fucking wish that I wasn’t hurting you so much. I’d do anything not to.’
We Are All Made of Stars Page 13