by Fiona Field
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About Soldiers’ Daughters
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To Ian.
For being patient.
1
As her father’s car drew up in front of Old College, Sandhurst, Samantha Lewis felt a surge of fear, raw, primal fear, and for a moment she thought she might actually be sick, as the adrenalin squirted into her bloodstream. She swallowed, shut her eyes and breathed deeply. When she opened them again after a couple of seconds she glanced across at her father, who was staring back at her. As usual his face was expressionless; no reassuring wink, no flicker of understanding, just an emotionless stare.
It wasn’t unexpected, that was how he was and she was used to it now, and over the years she’d come to accept the reason why, but the lack of empathy and sympathy shown by her father stiffened Sam’s spine. Determination replaced the fear. She’d show him. She’d prove to him she could do this. She’d make it, she’d get through the next year and she hoped when he came to her commissioning ceremony he would be proud of her. Maybe, if she succeeded, she’d finally crack the shell he’d developed to protect himself but which had also kept her at arm’s length for twenty-two years.
A warrant officer in immaculate number two dress and Sam Browne approached the car. Her father, Colonel Tim Lewis, wound the window down and turned his attention to the sergeant major.
The senior NCO glanced into the car, past the driver to Sam and said to her father, ‘If you’d like to park your car over there, sir.’ He waved his pace stick at the end of a line of already neatly parked vehicles. ‘And then, if the young lady would like to proceed into the building, she’ll be given further instructions.’
‘Thank you,’ said her father. Then he said, over his shoulder, ‘Get that, Sam?’
Sam sighed. The instructions were hardly difficult. She’d passed the army officers’ selection board, she had a first-class degree in electrical engineering and her father still treated her as if she was at prep school.
Her father parked the car as directed and Sam got out.
‘I’ll wait for you here,’ said her father, leaning across to talk to her through the still-open door.
Sam smoothed down the skirt of her dark suit and took a deep breath.
‘Get on with it, girl. We haven’t got all day.’
Around them, other cars were also disgorging new cadets and Sam glanced at her fellow inmates and tried to size them up. They all looked bright and eager but Sam wondered if they were putting on as much of a front as she was, trying to convince themselves, as much as anyone else, that they weren’t actually bricking it about what the next weeks and months held for them. She slammed the passenger door and headed for the steps to the main door. A colour sergeant was directing the new arrivals into the building so they could register, find their accommodation and then start the process of unloading all the kit they would need to survive in this environment.
A female staff sergeant took Sam’s name and details, handed her a map of the building, marked in pencil, of how to get to the back of it, where her father would be able to park and they could start the process of unloading.
‘When you’ve finished, Miss Lewis, if you could ask your father to re-park his car back out at the front and then if you could all report to the Memorial Chapel at two o’clock sharp for the Commandant’s welcome.’ Again the map was marked in pencil to show Sam where she needed to be. She suspected that finding her way without asking for further directions was one of her first tests here.
Sam returned to her dad and told him where they needed to go.
‘I’m having flashbacks,’ he remarked as he slipped the car into gear. Well, bully for you, she thought, nerves making her grumpy.
He drove off the huge parade square at the front of the beautiful neo-classical building that was to be Sam’s home for the next year – assuming the army didn’t have other ideas and chuck her out. Not that being chucked out was an option. She knew she had to have the moral fibre and courage to take everything the army might throw at her and get on with it. She had to get through this course. It was only a year. Surely anything was bearable for a year? To fail was unthinkable. She knew if she did she’d disappoint her father and she couldn’t bear to give him more heartache.
While her relationship with her father might be troubled, she hadn’t lacked for affection from other sources. Her grandparents and the succession of three nannies who had looked after her had all told her she was loved and cherished even though her father had never managed it. Now Sam was an adult she understood why, but her earlier bewilderment had left its indelible mark. Back then she’d been sure that he blamed her for the tragedy that had struck his family. Maybe if she’d not been born first everything would have been all right. It was William, her twin, who had died at birth, along with their mother, when the emergency C-section had gone horribly wrong. Sam’s birth had gone well but then William had got stuck and when his heart rate had dipped alarmingly they’d been forced to operate and that was when the placenta had been severed. In the desperate chaotic minutes following this, the team hadn’t been able to save either her mother or her brother. When she’d been old enough her granny had told her what had happened and had assured her that it had been no one’s fault, least of all hers. A terrible accident, ‘one of those things’. But for years Sam had been sure she’d known differently – it was her fault. Her fault for being first.
Now she was older she understood that her father was probably terrified of going through the hurt of loving someone again in case they got ripped out of his life, like his wife and baby had been. Keep everyone at arm’s length, don’t get involved, that way you can’t be hurt again. No wonder her father hadn’t ever been able to love her properly, although for all his shortcomings as a parent she still loved him. And she hoped that maybe one day she’d make him so proud he would love her back.
Michelle Flowers’s father drew his car up on the parade square about ten minutes after the Lewises’ car had been driven off round the back of Old College.
Major Henry Flowers shook his head. ‘You know, I still can’t get my head round the fact that you passed selection.’
‘Get over it, Dad. The army sees my potential, that’s all.’
‘Hmm.’ Her father was far from convinced. ‘Mind you, it’s one thing, pulling the wool over their eyes at the selection board. It’ll be another thing entirely, convincing them for the best part of a year that you’ve got the makings of an officer.’
‘I’ve got everything they’re looking for,’ said Michelle confidently. ‘Brains, courage, spirit…’
Henry snorted. ‘I didn’t hear obedience in that list.’
‘That’s because I’ve got a mind of my own.’
Henry snorted again. ‘There’s a difference between being able to think independently and being wilfully rebellious.’
‘So I don’t behave like a sheep. Baa,’ she added, insolently. ‘I was only obeying orders? Yeah, right. Like those are words which have gone down well in history.’
Henry gave up arguing. ‘Still, it’s made you get rid of those awful dreadlocks and the nose stud so that’s something to be grateful for.’
‘Dad, a couple of piercings and a hairstyle don’t make you a dead loss to society.’
‘No, but a drug habit does. In my day, any hint of drugs or anything like that and the army wouldn’t have had anything to do with you.’
Michelle shook her head in disbelief at her father’s attitude. ‘They’re more enlightened now, as long as you’re clean when you join.’
‘And are you?’ her father shot at her.
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‘Chill. Of course I am.’
Her father muttered something about she’d better be and Michelle got out of the car to collect her instructions about accommodation and what she needed to do, as Sam had done just before her.
Sam was on another trip to the car to ferry yet more belongings to her new room. She pulled the ironing board off the top of the pile, one of many items of ‘suggested’ kit on the list that had accompanied the letter formally requesting that she make arrangements to swear the oath of allegiance prior to her arrival at Sandhurst. Also included on the kit list had been shoe-polishing equipment, ten wooden hangers, black court shoes, spray starch, foot powder, padlocks, a steam iron, worn-in trainers, swimming costume, bedding, towels, toiletries, a smart suit, an alarm clock, plus a mass of personal documentation to prove she was who she claimed to be, including passport, birth certificate, P45, national insurance card and her educational certificates. It was like going back to boarding school, Sam had mused as she’d labelled everything and packed it in suitcases which were put in a pile in the hall together with the rest of her kit. Boarding school with guns…
‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed her father as he turned into the bleak corridor that led to Sam’s room.
Sam jumped and assumed she’d done something wrong. But her father wasn’t looking at her. There, coming in the opposite direction, was an old friend of her father’s, a fellow army officer and the father of a girl she’d shared a room with at prep school.
Sam felt her eyes widen in stunned shock. So if Major Flowers was here that meant Michelle…
And there she was, behind him. OK, she was a lot older than when Sam had last seen her but she was still completely recognisable and still incredibly tall. Only now she wasn’t lanky but elegant and slender, like a gazelle. Sam propped her ironing board against a cream-painted wall and thundered down the corridor.
‘No running,’ bawled a stentorian voice behind her. But Sam had reached her goal and was hugging Michelle. And like their last hug, years previously, Sam still only came up to Michelle’s shoulders.
Both girls were laughing and staring at each other in amazement. And in her absolutely joy at seeing a familiar face, Sam forgot that being friends with Michelle hadn’t always been plain sailing.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Sam. ‘This is such a surprise. I mean you. You of all people.’
‘I can’t say I’m so surprised about you, following in your father’s footsteps and everything.’
On the other hand, Sam was stunned that Michelle had joined up. She had always been so madcap and impulsive. Maybe she’d calmed down now she was older.
‘Which is your room?’ asked Michelle.
Sam pointed down the corridor. ‘That one.’
Michelle looked at the piece of paper in her hand. ‘I’m twenty-six F.’
The pair scanned the corridor.
‘There,’ said Sam. ‘Almost opposite. Perfect.’ Then she added, ‘Oh, this is so fantastic. I know that everyone says the first five weeks are hell on earth but anything’s bearable with a buddy.’
Michelle nodded. ‘Oh, God. And I thought getting here was fucking brilliant, but now you’re here too…’
Sam suppressed a grin at the look on both fathers’ faces caused by Michelle’s swearing. Maybe she hadn’t changed. Sam wondered how the hell her old friend was going to manage, here at the RMAS, given her past, uneasy relationship with authority.
The beginning of that first day was wonderfully civilised. After all the cars had been unloaded everyone made their way to the memorial chapel, which was across the square at the back of the college, behind Sam’s and Michelle’s rooms. There, surrounded by the names of officers who had trained at Sandhurst and then made the ultimate sacrifice in the mud and blood of the Flanders trenches, the cadets’ parents were assured by the Commandant that the Royal Military Academy would mould their offspring to be leaders, give them an unswerving moral compass to distinguish between right and wrong, just and unjust, how their pastoral care would always be a priority and how they would become valuable members of society. It was sobering and uplifting in equal measure.
Then it was tea and cake in the officers’ mess while their company commanders and the civilian teaching staff, collectively known as the directing staff (or the DS, Sam’s father told her), circulated, making polite chit-chat. But once the parents were off the premises there was a distinct shift in mood and tempo.
The cadets returned to their rooms where they took off their smart suits and donned their issue, one-size-fits-all, green coveralls, which actually fitted no one but would be their everyday garb until they could be issued with everything else they’d need, from PE kit to parade uniforms. Now dressed uniformly, they were directed to stand outside their respective bedroom doors.
And that was when the shouting started. Suddenly they weren’t civilians but the lowest of the low as far as the army was concerned. Pond life ranked higher than they did and, it seemed, was certainly considered more intelligent and was held in higher esteem by the entire army. They knew nothing, they were nothing and if they knew what was good for them they would do nothing but obey orders from their superiors, and it seemed that everyone else at Sandhurst – probably including the stable-yard cat, thought Sam – was superior. Talk about being at the bottom of the food chain.
It was over supper that Michelle and Sam finally got to catch up on what had happened in the intervening years since they’d been sent off to different boarding schools when they were eleven.
‘So you did electrical engineering at uni?’ said Michelle. ‘Bloody hell. You’re a bit of a clever clogs, then, aren’t you? Mind you, your dad always gave you weird presents for birthdays and everything, didn’t he? You must have been the only girl at St Martin’s with a Meccano set and a model railway. At least my step-mum made sure Dad’s presents were more appropriate. She might be a cow and I still hate her but at least she made Dad choose girlie pressies,’ said Michelle.
And your family life probably explains why you’re a bit bonkers, thought Sam, fondly. But, then, she wasn’t in much of a position to cast aspersions on Michelle’s family hang-ups when she had her own to contend with. It suddenly seemed obvious to her that she and Michelle were both desperate for their fathers’ attention, only they tried to get it in different ways: Michelle through her outrageous behaviour and shock tactics, and she by being good and trying only to please.
‘So what about you? What did you read at uni?’
Michelle snorted. ‘Sore subject. I did English but failed my first-year exams. It didn’t help that I had a bit of a fling with my tutor before it all turned sour.’ She sighed. ‘Mind you, he didn’t have to threaten to get a restraining order slapped on me.’
Sam’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘He was a total drama queen, if you ask me,’ said Michelle, shrugging off the enormity of what she’d disclosed. ‘I only wanted to get him to see my side of the argument, but he said I was harassing him. If he’d only stopped and listened to me…’ She sighed again. ‘Anyway, Dad went off on one so, what with one thing and another, I fucked off to Aus.’
‘Really?’ Sam barely knew what to say. Restraining order? Although Michelle said he’d only threatened her with one so maybe it had been a scare tactic, nothing more. Even so… sheesh. But she’d made it through selection so what the heck.
‘Yeah. And I had a great time in Aus,’ continued Michelle, unaware of how stunned her old friend was. ‘It’s such a blinding place. So laid back and friendly. At least the people are; their government is a bunch of bastards.’
So she’d managed to cross the Australian authorities as well as her uni tutor? ‘What did you do?’ said Sam.
‘I over-stayed my visa by a few weeks and they got really arsey.’
‘Michelle! Of course they would. There are rules. And how long was a few weeks?’
‘Nine months.’ Sam gasped and Michelle shrugged. ‘Anyway, I was up shit creek because my open retur
n air ticket had run out and I couldn’t work because of my visa – which they refused to renew – so I couldn’t earn enough to buy another ticket…’ She gave Sam a look as if to suggest it had all been a conspiracy against her rather than a total cock-up on her part.
‘Bloody hell. What did you do?’
‘I had to get Dad to bail me out. And of course as soon as I got back he went off on one again. Honestly, Sam, it was only a few hundred quid for the ticket – well, maybe five, but he could afford it.’
Sam didn’t think that was the point but kept quiet.
‘Anyway, as he was being a pain to live with, I decided I’d better get a job that came with living accommodation. So here I am. From making the decision to getting here it’s all been a bit of a roller-coaster, so if I find it’s complete pants I can easily get out. All I need to do is tell them I’m back on the dope and that’ll be me home free. Not that I really want to do that because I really, really do think, for once in my life, I’ve made the right decision. But it’s nice to know I’ve got an exit strategy handy, you know, just in case…’
Sam grinned. Michelle really hadn’t changed. Still nuts, still incorrigible.
‘Dad is utterly convinced,’ continued Michelle, ‘I won’t make it through to Sovereign’s Parade and I really want to prove him wrong. Honestly, if anything is going to keep me going his lack of faith in me will.’
Once again it seemed that she and Michelle had a lot in common – they were army brats, they’d both been sent to boarding school and neither of them had their birth mother around, but now it seemed both of them wanted to prove to their fathers they had what it took to get a commission.
Sam might have thought she was fit, she thought she knew how to look after her kit, she thought she knew how to bull her drill shoes and she thought she knew how to march because she’d been in the Officer Training Corps at uni. How wrong she was. In a matter of hours she discovered that she knew nothing. Zero. Zilch. Not a single thing that she did was remotely up to the standard deemed acceptable by the colour sergeant in charge of her platoon of thirty women. But if she thought she was faring badly, it was even worse for Michelle. Michelle might also be the daughter of an officer but she hadn’t a clue about the army or what was expected. Maybe backpacking round Aus hadn’t been the greatest preparation.