He stood up and looked out of the window with both of his hands on his waist, his elbows stuck out at right angles, more pre-highland jig than little teapot. He spoke to her without turning around, ‘Maybe you can’t, Poppy. Maybe you will have to accept that the wheels turn slowly, but you must accept that they ARE turning. Does that help at all?’ He turned to face her again.
‘Truthfully?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, not even a little bit.’
‘Thought not. You are a determined girl. I admire your tenacity. Don’t give up on me. I will give it some serious thought and I will get back to you.’
‘Thanks for seeing me today, I know you are busy and—’
‘Not at all, I have really enjoyed meeting you.’ He sounded sincere.
‘I’ll wait to hear from you, Tristram.’
‘You are an extraordinary person, Poppy Day. Martin is very lucky to have you on his side.’
This made her smile, not because of the compliment, but because she doubted that Martin felt very lucky about anything at that point in time.
He carried on, ‘You are a real tour de force. Maybe it is down to you, maybe you should go and get him back yourself!’
He laughed and she laughed, but unbeknown to both, a tiny seed had been sown. A small kernel of a solution that over the next few hours would be fed, watered and would grow until it had legs. Then Poppy would have no choice but to run with it.
Poppy headed straight to The Unpopulars, still in her finery.
‘What’s the matter, Poppy Day?’
‘Nothing, Nan, I’m fine.’
‘I know you’re not fine, so don’t say that to me if it isn’t true.’
Her voice was slightly sterner than usual. She hated Poppy not being straight with her, knowing her well enough to sense when she was not.
‘I’m a bit worried about Mart, Nan. You know Mart? Mart, my husband.’ She added the little memory jogger in case his was one of the names and faces that was lost. Poppy pictured Dorothea’s memory like a big fishing net, with the holes getting bigger and bigger, wider and wider apart, so more and more stuff fell through. What was left sitting on top were the biggest, most important fish that wouldn’t disappear until the net had almost gone. Poppy figured she must be like one of those enormous tuna fish that took three Japanese men to haul over the side. When they do it’s amid a tidal wave of blood and guts as the filleting begins. That was Poppy; a giant flapping tuna fish, caught in her nan’s net, not going anywhere, not just yet.
‘I know who Mart is, for Gawd’s sake.’ It was the stern voice once again.
Poppy thought carefully about how to phrase what came next, searched for the right tone and level of detail, avoiding at all times the full-blown horror. She mentally edited her response, ‘You know that he went to visit Afghanistan?’
‘Fighting, wasn’t he?’’
‘Yes, Nan, fighting, well, he has only gone and got himself lost!’ She tried a small giggle to show Dorothea that there was nothing to worry about, that she was fine, that it was all fine.
‘Lost?’
‘Yes, Nan, lost.’
‘What on earth do you mean, girl? Do you mean he needs a map or do you mean lost in action, killed, dead.’
‘No! No, not killed and not dead. He’s…’ Poppy struggled again to find the right tone and wording.
She pictured him them, his frightened eyes, the blow to the stomach. She bowed her head until her chin was on her chest. She always thought of him tethered, with a rope or a sheet and always in a makeshift blindfold. She pictured him dirty, ingrained with filth and needing a wash. She couldn’t stop the steady flow of tears that slid down her face and snaked unbidden into her mouth. ‘Oh Nan!’
Exhaustion and worry caught up with her; Poppy dropped to the floor. She knelt on the lino at her nan’s feet, where the scrub marks of a thousand little accidents were etched on its surface. She placed her head on Dorothea’s lap as the old lady stroked her hair. It was exactly what she needed, to be six again, to have her nan pet her hair and tell her in between ‘shhhhh’s’ that everything was going to be all right. The skin of her knees stung against the cold hard floor, but Poppy didn’t care. She could have stayed there for hours. She wanted to stay there for hours. It felt wonderful, not to be the person that held it all together, but instead to be taken care of, even if it was just for a minute.
Her nan’s knobbled, bent fingers stroked her hair and face as she cried into the crimplene trousers with their elasticated waist. It made Poppy smile to think that she would leave a damp patch that later might be misconstrued. Nathan would tut as he changed her for bed. At least he had the joy of knowing that all his hard work and effort would be rewarded when he got his hands on those million pounds.
‘Now, Poppy Day, sit up straight and tell me what this is all about? Why the tears? This isn’t like you at all.’ She cupped her granddaughter’s face in her crooked hands and made her look up. Poppy sidled off the floor and took her place on the creaky plastic chair. Dorothea took Poppy’s hand into her cold, smooth palms and for the second time that night, the girl was grateful for her nan’s contact. ‘Come on, Poppy Day, whasamatter, darlin’?’
Poppy drew a sharp breath and shared her burden with the only person in the world other than Martin who might care about what she was going through. ‘Mart is missing, Nan. Well, that’s what they say officially, but the truth is they know where he is. He is being held by a religious fundamentalist group…’
‘Baddies?’
Poppy smiled, ‘Yes, baddies. The worrying thing, Nan, is that I don’t think that anyone is trying very hard to get him back, almost like they are going to let him be lost and hope that he just, disappears.’ The horror of these words spoken aloud caused her tears to spring again.
‘Is he still alive, darlin’?’
‘Yes.’ It was as definitive as she could make it. Poppy had to believe that he was. She still thought that she would ‘feel’ if anything else were true, her husband, her love.
‘Are people helping you? You know, his work people?’
‘Yes. In fact I had a meeting at Downing Street today; imagine that, Nan, me at Downing Street! I met with the foreign secretary; fat lot of good it did me.’
Dorothea ignored this inconsequential piece of information. Loopy or not, she had little regard for title, money or status. What would she say, in her more lucid years? ‘I couldn’t give a rat’s arse if he was the Queen of Sheba, Poppy Day. People is people. We all come into the world the same way, we all leave it the same way and that makes us all equal.’
‘And you think you know where he is?’
‘Yes, Nan, not exactly, but roughly whereabouts.’
She bent towards her granddaughter as though they were co-conspirators. Speaking slowly after a few seconds’ pause, she whispered, ‘You need to go and get him, Poppy Day. You need to go and find him and bring him home. He is your husband and he loves you. When I’m gone he is all that you’ll have left.’ She was direct, she was lucid and she was far, far from crazy.
Poppy stared at her. The tears stopped falling. She laughed and her nan laughed back. She was right, he was her husband, he loved her and when her nan was gone, he would be all that she would have left. It struck her as more than a coincidence that two people had said the very same thing to her in as many hours. A quirky twist of fate? To some maybe, but not to Poppy, to her it was a sign.
Poppy’s future without Martin was unthinkable. If you asked any of their friends about the Cricket/Day duo, they’d say that it was hard to think of one without the other, like an old couple that have been together for so long they are viewed as a single unit. So much so, that when you said one of their names, your lips automatically form the shape to say the other, like fish ’n’ chips or Fred ’n’ Ginger.
They had been a proper couple from the age of fourteen, as opposed to best mates since they were six. Was this sweet or a little bit sad? How did they know if they were with the
right person if they hadn’t looked anywhere else, or tried loving other people? Did they simply settle for what was on offer? These would be fair questions, but it would be wrong to assign them any credence. Very wrong.
As with the Jackie Sinclair in the playground episode, any sense of danger, embarrassment or harm that could possibly come to Poppy and ping! Martin would be there like a genie from a magic lamp, to soften the blow, make sure she wasn’t hurt and comfort her when and wherever she needed it. They may have known each other since they were six years old, but what they shared was deep, dedicated love. She would die for him and him, her. That’s just how it was. To the ears of the cynical this might sound clichéd, but for Poppy and Martin it was the foundation of their love, a deep, unspoken commitment to be there when they were needed, wherever they were needed.
Poppy considered the idea of going out to Afghanistan and the possibility that she might be able to bring him back. Strangely it didn’t feel stupid or implausible; in fact, quite the opposite: it felt possible and necessary. It was the solution that she’d been searching for. Poppy knew, without any shadow of doubt, that there was no one in the whole wide world who would have the same vested interest in bringing Martin home as her. No one else would lose sleep or the will to live because he was missing. It was down to her, she had to be the one to bring him home. Her, Poppy Day, she would go and get her husband back! Practicality started to creep into the idea, blurring the edges of the plan. ‘I won’t be able to see you every day, Nan, if I have to go and get Mart. I might be gone for a little while and I don’t know how long.’
Dorothea shrugged her shoulders. These words were of little interest, as if not seeing her for a while was a sacrifice that they would both have to be make. She was right.
‘Oh, ’ello, Nathan!’ He stood in the doorway. ‘I’m so glad you are here. There is someone that I would like you to meet…’
Nathan stepped forward and shook Poppy’s hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Poppy Day.’ Nathan realised as soon as he had spoken that they had not yet been ‘introduced’.
They paused, mid-handshake, both staring at Dorothea, waiting for her reaction. She looked down at the wet patch on her trousers and looked back up at Nathan. ‘I appear to have pissed myself.’ Nathan and Poppy laughed long and hard as Dorothea sat stony-faced, unmoved by their hysterics.
Later, when she was ready for bed, resplendent in her flannelette pyjamas and bed jacket, Poppy stood and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Goodnight, Nan, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have sweet dreams.’
‘You have sweet dreams too, my Poppy Day.’
Poppy stood to walk out of the room.
Her nan’s voice halted her progress, ‘Poppy Day?’
‘Yes, Nan?’
‘Don’t waste a single second, my girl. I don’t want to see you here tomorrow. You go tomorrow; you go and get him back. I’ll be right here waiting and I’ll see you when you come home.’ She looked away from her then, fixated by the TV remote control; there had to be a cookery programme on somewhere.
Poppy leant her head on the frame and captured the image inside her head. She whispered across the air, the atmosphere now full of the canned laughter and recorded clapping from the crap on TV, ‘Thank you, I will, Nan. I will bring him home. I love you.’
Nine
ONCE AGAIN MARTIN dreamt that he was woken by Poppy. He could tell it was Poppy by her touch and smell. Again she stroked the hair away from his forehead. Her voice was gentle, ‘Mart… Mart… It’s OK, baby, I’m here…’
This particular dream was the worst form of torture. He would have preferred a short physical shock than the dreadful slow realisation that her presence was a vision and he was still so very far away from her.
When Martin reluctantly opened his eyes, he spied a tiny white feather that had danced through a small gap and found a resting place on his arm. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, raising it to his lips, feeling the sweet tickle against his skin. To most, it would be seen as a little white feather that had drifted into the room, shaken from a far-off eiderdown or fallen from a scrawny chicken, but for Martin it was a gift from his Poppy, a signal of hope, a token of love. He held it tight and he kept it.
The day that started with such an offering continued to be a memorable one. Man U entered the room, beaming and clearly excited about something. He had an agitation that Martin recognised in someone who has a secret, usually either a practical joke or surprise present, but something so exciting that the information is literally waiting to burst out of them. Man U could hardly contain himself. After hopping from one foot to the other, he pulled his hand from behind his back to reveal two folded pieces of newspaper. He held them out to Martin. He had bought him a gift and was very pleased with himself.
‘What is it?’ Martin was curious, as eager as a child for the diversion.
‘Manchester United!’
Martin took the newspaper into his hands. It was one complete page and a cutting of about eight square inches. He hadn’t read or seen written English in what felt like a very long time. His eyes took a little while to focus on the black print that was slightly smudged in places. The whole time he studied it, Man U stood nodding and smiling, like an eager puppy wanting praise and recognition. Martin laughed loudly and put his hand on the man’s arm. There was never much physical contact; his captor could read a lot by the gesture. He was absolutely delighted.
Martin, in recent years, had tried to make up for his lack of academic achievement by reading. To say he was a big reader wouldn’t cut it; he was an avid, addicted reader, devouring books on any topic as though making up for lost time. He remembered what he read, which gave him an incredible vocabulary and a wide knowledge. He felt a certain embarrassment about learning that was typical of his peer group, reading secretly and never confessing to his mates that he deliberated over Le Carré as well as watching the football. Poppy would tease him, ‘No one cares that you are a book-obsessed nerd, Mart! The bigger boys aren’t going to pick on you now, you’re a grown-up and you can do what you like!’ He would usually throw whatever he was reading at her. To be able to study words, no matter how random the reading material, was a wonderful gift.
The smaller piece was an advertisement, a complete advert taken from a paper. It was fascinating. Dyson it read across the top, Martin learnt it word for word:
Ball technology: The idea for BallTM technology came about from an engineer studying new ways to steer. It started crudely – an old wand handle attached to a wheel. Eventually the wheel became a ball – and an ideal home for the motor. We’ve done away with wheels. The new Dyson upright machines ride on a ball so you can steer with ease – no more push/pull around corners and obstacles. Inside the ball is the motor, giving the machine a lower centre of gravity and improving manoeuvrability even further.
It wasn’t that Martin was particularly interested in housework, but it was a link to another world, his world. In that place that was strange and unfamiliar, here was a little square of paper that enabled him to picture the carpet at home, their furniture and the two of them sitting on it. He could envisage his Poppy doing the housework and it gave him comfort.
It was a scrappy piece of paper that was so much greater than the sum of its parts. Martin figured that it had probably been touched by hands like his, belonging to someone who would live in a house, in England. Possibly someone like him, imagine! After days of having very little to do, other than reflect on his predicament, this gave him something to concentrate on; the idea for the product, how it might work. Martin spent hours trying to understand the technology.
As if the advert wasn’t amazing enough, the other page was completely bloody brilliant! It wasn’t news of the campaign or information about the world in general, it was much, much better than that. It was a TV listing page, a whole page of telly programmes. It detailed shows from a weekday. The top of the page had been ripped off, so it was impossible to know what the day or date was, but it didn’t matter. Martin co
uld tell that it was a weekday by the lack of ‘big Saturday night’ programme or film.
He went through each programme, reading the content synopsis. He then lay back and imagined the particular show, picturing it and joining it together with episodes that he had seen or could remember. He got so good at this; it was just like watching the telly inside his head. There was an episode of Only Fools and Horses billed as ‘Yuppy Love’. It was the one where Del Boy and Trigger end up in a wine bar with a bunch of yuppies; when Del falls through the bar. Martin considered it the best bit of television in the whole world. He and all his mates loved it. Martin lay on the mattress, hearing the words, picturing Del Boy with his elbow out, drink in hand and bang! Whenever he watched the clip, it made no difference that he knew what was going to happen, and when he waited for it, it was still hilarious as Del Boy fell from view, smack on to the floor. Martin laughed until he cried. It was brilliant.
Every programme on that sheet got the same treatment, even the kids’ shows, most of which he’d never heard of. Martin had never considered himself to have a good imagination, but this disproved the belief. He took bits of information and turned them into shows inside his head. It was magnificent.
Physically, Martin was in bad shape. The severe beating he had received upon capture had left him sore, bruised and aching. Having existed for a few days with his hands above his head, his shoulders had been left with an acute pain that peaked every time he moved. One of his fingers had been broken and started to heal without any attention. It throbbed when left alone, but if snagged against the mattress or his clothing, sent a searing pain shooting up his wrist. It was a constant reminder of what he had been through, made him think how lucky he was to have survived. It made him think of Aaron.
His face had suffered after its incarceration in the filthy sack. His eyes continued to ooze, clotting his eyelashes upon waking and impairing his vision; it was as if he viewed the world through gauze. His teeth felt loose in their gums, he would regularly spit large globules of blood, flecked with gum and fragments of tooth.
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