by Paul Torday
‘I’m sorry. Did I do that?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said briefly. She took her glass back from her companion. She was a tall red-haired girl, with blue eyes.
‘I’m Richard Gaunt.’
‘Oh yes. Emma’s boyfriend.’
She didn’t sound especially friendly. I didn’t blame her. I smiled encouragingly.
‘You’re the soldier, aren’t you?’
‘I’m a restaurateur now,’ I replied, still smiling.
‘I remember Emma telling me. Iraq and Afghanistan. Did you ever think about what you were doing there, or did you just believe what the politicians told you?’ She turned and addressed her companion, a chubby man wearing a dark blue suit with receding black hair. ‘How anyone could believe shooting and bombing all those innocent people was going to bring back democracy is beyond me.’
The chubby man removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped them. He was smiling at me in a nervous, ingratiating way.
‘Griselda’s terribly anti-war, aren’t you, Grizzle?’
I smiled back at him and said, ‘It wasn’t quite like that.’
‘Well, what was it like, then?’ asked Griselda. I thought for a moment before answering her. I was about to come out with the usual platitudes: ‘The people of Afghanistan are grateful we are there’ or ‘We liberated them from the Taliban’ but the words that came out were not what I expected.
‘I don’t know why we were there,’ I told her. ‘But I know we paid for it. I once picked up a friend and found he had no legs. There was just the trunk of his body left. He’d lost an eye, too. That was an IED. Roadside bombs. And all you fucking people do when we come back is lecture us about human rights, and upsetting the Muslim world. We’re just soldiers. We do as we’re told. And then, when we get home, we have to put up with people like you.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said the balding man. Griselda had gone deathly pale.
I said, ‘Since you brought the subject up, that’s how it was.’
I turned away. The two of them made off through the crowd and I went and stood on my own for a moment, waiting for my pulse to drop back down to normal. What had happened to me? Why had I behaved like that? I shook my head. The crowd was thinning now, and people were leaving. I hoped that was because it was late, and that it didn’t have anything to do with my behaviour. With luck, Emma would never hear about it. But I was out of luck. She was standing near the door, saying goodbye and thanking people for coming. I saw the tall redhead and her friend stop and say a word or two to her.
A little later we were on our own, apart from the staff, who were clearing up the empty glasses and dirty plates. Emma came across the room to where I was standing, watching everyone else at work.
‘That went very well, on the whole.’
‘Yes, you did brilliantly, darling.’
She was frowning a little. She hesitated and then asked, ‘What did you say to Griselda? She seemed distressed about something.’
I wondered what to tell her. ‘She made some anti-war remark. She doesn’t like soldiers. It upset me, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, you upset her too. The poor girl was in tears when she left. I know Griselda can be a bit punchy at times, but honestly, darling, what on earth did you say?’
‘I can’t remember. I’m sorry if I upset her. But she shouldn’t have been so bloody rude to me.’ My voice rose in volume as I spoke.
Emma put her hand on my arm.
‘All right, darling. Calm down. I’m not criticising you. Only these are our customers, OK? The people we need to keep happy. Can we do that, do you think?’
I didn’t like the way Emma was looking at me.
‘Whatever you say, darling.’
Two years later, I stood once more in front of ‘Emma’s’. You could still just about make out the trace of the name in the orange glow of the streetlights. When the restaurant had been put into administration, the receivers had rashly invested in a can of white paint to remove poor Emma’s name, thinking they could relet the place quickly. It hadn’t done them any good. The restaurant had changed hands too often in the last few years and people who checked on its past decided it was jinxed. Now it was just the ghost of its former self, a cold empty building that had once echoed with noise and life.
I turned and walked back towards home. I wasn’t hungry any more. I felt sick: sick with memories. When I got to my flat I unlocked the door as quietly as I could and crept in. I suppose I hoped Adeena might have returned. I’d been lost in my own memories for a while but now the anxiety came surging back.
I sat in the empty flat and tried not to think about Adeena. Instead, recalling that night at Emma’s restaurant and my row with her friend Griselda triggered another memory.
We were on the road to Musa Qala, in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. We had left the base at Sangin in the morning with orders to reinforce an operation that was clearing Taliban out of the orchards and irrigated fields of the plain. When we arrived at the base from Camp Bastion, we were shown the vehicles we would be travelling in. To my horror I saw they were Snatch 2 vehicles, a desert version of the Land Rover with token armour cladding that gave its occupants about the same amount of protection from IEDs or rockets as if they were sitting inside a tin can.
I complained to the major in charge of the vehicle park, but he wasn’t helpful.
‘It’s that or walk,’ he told me. ‘We don’t have anything else at the moment.’
Sergeant Hawkes was gloomy when I told him what we would be travelling in.
‘Do you think they actually don’t want us to survive, boss? Perhaps we know too much.’
The same thought had occurred to me, but I dismissed it. I couldn’t see anyone being that well organised. It was chaos here, not conspiracy; just as it had been chaos in Iraq.
An hour later we drove off towards Musa Qala. It was a pleasant day in late spring, but we were driving along dusty roads in a noisy Land Rover with a diesel engine that sounded as if it had been driven flat out for most of the Second World War, then dropped off a cliff. Travelling in this fashion, it was already too hot for comfort.
We passed through fields of green wheat. Farther back from the road were groves of trees covered in white blossom. Small children waved at us from the roadside and here and there we could see the figures of farmers working in the fields.
We were about half an hour from our destination when, a long way ahead of us, something pulled out into the road.
‘Where have all the people gone?’ Sergeant Hawkes said.
‘What?’
‘I said where have all the people gone?’
A moment ago there had been people everywhere, dotted around the fields, or standing by the roadside watching our convoy drive past. Now the fields were empty. Ahead of us I could see a cart, pulled by a donkey and being guided by a single man. As we watched, it came to a halt by the side of the road. The brake lights of the vehicle in front came on as the driver slowed in order to manoeuvre around the cart without hitting it. The whole convoy slowed down in response.
‘Don’t slow down, for fuck’s sake!’ shouted Sergeant Hawkes. ‘Keep the speed up—’
At that moment there was a whoosh and a rocket slammed into the side of the vehicle in front. The explosion wrecked our windscreen and the vehicle in front vanished. I heard the driver scream as our Land Rover left the road and tipped slowly down an embankment into a shallow irrigation ditch. I was out of the door almost before the vehicle came to a stop. Behind me I heard small-arms fire, then the sound of a heavy-calibre machine gun. I thought the fire was coming from a grove of trees to the right of the road.
I wiped blood from my face – my own or someone else’s – and grabbed an automatic rifle from the vehicle. The driver was dead. Sergeant Hawkes was sitting in the back, moaning, his hands covering his eyes. Blood trickled between his fingers.
‘I can’t see, sir,’ he said. ‘Sir? Are you there?’
‘I’m here,�
�� I said. ‘Get your head down. Hang on a moment.’
I looked back down the column of vehicles. All of the other Land Rovers had stopped. There was nowhere to go: the road was too narrow to turn around in and there was an embankment on either side. The ambush site had been well chosen.
Up and down the line soldiers had spilled out of the Land Rovers and were returning fire. I could see black-gowned figures moving towards us through the knee-high crops. I ran down the line and shouted at the driver of the radio vehicle to call in air support. He was already on it. I had just turned back when there was another whoosh and a rocket slammed into the road beside my own Land Rover. There was another explosion. The vehicle was on fire now, and badly damaged, but I managed to open the door. There was a lot of blood, and human tissue everywhere. It was like some insane operating theatre. Sergeant Hawkes was still moving and making bubbling sounds so I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him out. It was surprisingly easy and he weighed much less than I expected. It was because he no longer had any legs.
The firefight lasted half an hour or so, and we took more casualties before the air support arrived. Then the grove of trees the Taliban had been hiding in was incinerated, and the firing stopped. The last I saw of Sergeant Hawkes was his tiny figure under a blanket on a stretcher, being loaded into a helicopter that would take him to the military hospital at Camp Bastion.
I visited him once when I was living with Emma, after the restaurant had opened and the scene with Emma’s friend Griselda had brought him back to mind. I decided that for once I should stop thinking about myself and would go and see him. Tracking him down was another matter, but in the end I found him.
I knew that he had nearly died at Camp Bastion, but the battlefield surgeons had saved him and he had been shipped to the hospital at Selly Oak. From there he had been sent to a regional rehabilitation centre in Yorkshire. That was where Sergeant Hawkes had spent the last twelve months of his life.
I went by train to York, and then by rented car. The ‘Regional Rehabilitation Centre’ was a series of single-storey brick buildings, of that peculiar school of architecture that is associated with former prisons, lunatic asylums or isolation hospitals. I parked on a potholed area of tarmac and followed the signs through to reception. Through the double doors I found a lino-clad waiting area with a few canvas-backed chairs placed along the walls. The receptionist’s cubicle was empty. Somewhere a phone rang. It rang for a long time, then stopped.
At last someone appeared – a young girl of about seventeen, I guessed, wearing a white tunic. She was holding a magazine.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to see Sergeant Hawkes.’
‘You what, love?’
We stared at each other.
After a moment she said, ‘I’m new here. Is he a patient?’
‘Yes.’
‘Only there isn’t anyone about today. Everyone’s off on a training day. Can you come back tomorrow?’
‘No, I can’t,’ I said. ‘Which way are the wards?’
At that moment a porter appeared pushing a trolley with a tea urn. I turned to him and obtained directions, leaving the receptionist staring at me with her mouth open. After a moment she lost interest and went back to her magazine.
My footsteps echoed as I walked along the corridors. The place felt empty and it smelled empty. In one room I saw a man in pyjamas sitting on his bed smoking a cigarette. There was nothing obviously wrong with him: he had all his limbs at any rate. All the other rooms off this corridor appeared to be empty.
‘Sergeant Hawkes?’ I asked. The man jerked with his thumb, indicating that I should keep going. At length I came to a ward marked ‘Prosthetics Rehabilitation Unit’. I pushed open the doors. The room beyond was large, cold and green: green lino on the floors, green paint on the walls. At one end was a large television screen. At the other end was a single bed. Next to it stood a wheelchair. Sergeant Hawkes sat there with a blanket over his knees, or at least over where his knees had once been.
‘Hello?’ he called as I opened the doors. His voice was thinner than I remembered, more shaky.
‘Sergeant Hawkes?’
‘Captain Gaunt? Sir?’ Then: ‘It’s very kind of you to come all this way, boss. I hope it wasn’t just to see me.’
I walked towards him, then reached out and took his hand. For a moment I clasped it in both my hands and then let go. It felt clammy and cold.
‘How are you?’ I asked, sitting down on the bed.
‘I am as you see, boss. Much improved. I’m being fitted with prosthetic legs next week. There’s a bit of a waiting list for them. This unit is at the back of beyond, you must have noticed, sir. They’re waiting for the funding to be released, so that they can equip the place properly.’
‘That’s a bloody long time to wait.’
‘They had to wait until the wounds had healed properly. It took a long time. There were complications: secondary infections and suchlike. But I’m better now.’
‘You look well,’ I lied. His face was thin and hollow-cheeked and there were dark circles under his eyes. One eye was entirely red underneath a drooping eyelid. The other looked normal, but there was a patchwork of scars around both of them.
‘How’s your sight?’ I asked.
‘I lost it in one eye when that windscreen blew in. I’ve got about fifty per cent vision in the other one, though, so that’s something to be thankful for. Not quite eyeless in Gaza, sir, but definitely legless.’
I didn’t understand the allusion. Sergeant Hawkes was always quoting bits of poetry or literature that went straight over my head.
‘Well, that’s good,’ I said. ‘Are you the only one in this ward?’
‘I am at the moment,’ said Sergeant Hawkes. ‘When they get the money there will be more patients here. My only regret is that it’s a bit far for my family to come. My parents live in Kent.’
‘And are they looking after you well?’ I asked. Sergeant Hawkes didn’t answer for a moment. The loneliness must be awful, I thought. Even when the staff weren’t on a ‘training day’ I imagined the place must be as quiet as a tomb.
‘Oh yes,’ he said finally. ‘The people here are marvellous. They’re all away on a jolly: team-building, they call it. But Ben the porter keeps an eye on me when there’s nobody else around. He’s an ex-soldier too.’
We sat and chatted for a while. Sergeant Hawkes became more animated as we talked and his face flushed an unhealthy red. He had great plans for the future. As soon as his new limbs were fitted and he learned how to use them, he was going to apply for a desk job in the regiment.
‘Even if it’s just stuffing forms into envelopes,’ he said, ‘it’ll be something to do. I don’t want to leave the army, if they’ll have me back.’
He asked what I was doing and I told him about the restaurant.
‘A restaurant, boss? That doesn’t sound like you.’
‘It keeps me out of mischief,’ I explained.
For a while we talked about the regiment and about other people we had known. He nodded, but didn’t seem very interested.
Then he said, ‘Do you think it was all worth it, sir?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The war. The war in Iraq; the war in Afghanistan. I hear we’ve pulled out of Basra now and there’s talk about NATO getting out of Afghanistan. What was the point of us going there in the first place?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Our job was to go wherever they told us to go.’
‘I watch television all day, every day,’ said Sergeant Hawkes. ‘I watch the news channels a lot, when they remember to leave the remote somewhere I can reach it. It seems to me that not much has changed in the countries we’ve been fighting in. People are getting killed every day. Some say half the politicians in Afghanistan are on the take. You wonder what the point of it all is.’
‘Best not to think about it too much,’ I suggested.
‘Well, you always used to say I read too much, thought too much, a
nd talked too much. And you were right.’ Sergeant Hawkes laughed. ‘But there you are: that’s me, always complaining about something.’
We talked for a while longer, but the silences grew between remarks. At last I looked at my watch.
‘Well, I have a train to catch,’ I said.
‘It was so kind of you to come all this way just to see me,’ said Sergeant Hawkes.
‘I should have come before,’ I said. ‘Keep in touch. Let me know if they move you. I’ll visit again, wherever you are.’
Sergeant Hawkes took my hand as if to shake it, then patted it with the other hand. I knew I wouldn’t come again. I couldn’t bear seeing what had happened to him.
On the train back I thought about Sergeant Hawkes and what he had given up for his country. He had given up what most of us called a life: to live out his days partially sighted and heavily disabled doing some administrative job in the back office of a garrison camp was the best he could look forward to. I had two or three newspapers in front of me to kill the time: they were full of stories about a new football coach at Chelsea; a row between the government and a banker; a celebrity who was dying of cancer. There was also a small article, less than an inch of single column, about a car bomb killing sixty people in a market in Baghdad.
There was nothing else in the papers that day about the wars that had taken away so much of Sergeant Hawkes’s life. Nobody knew where these places were, or what they looked like, apart from a few glimpses of rock and sand on television. Nobody knew what the lives of the people had been like before we invaded, or what their lives were like now. Nobody knew why we were there: either they didn’t believe the official explanations or, more often, they simply didn’t understand them. Recently the public had begun to take more notice of soldiers coming home on leave: there were a few well-reported funeral parades; a few welcome-home parties in the local pubs. But what did it really mean? Most people felt it had nothing to do with them, after all. It was a war on terror which had produced yet more terror, and everyone had already forgotten how it started, what lies had been told, or what truths had emerged.