Poppy Day

by Amanda Prowse

  Poppy didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Body armour? Second flight? Transit destination? What was the usual bloody drill? She bit her thumbnail, feeling so out of her depth that she was fearful this whole thing could only end in disaster.

  Poppy had been so preoccupied with her identity and worrying about getting discovered that she hadn’t thought about getting on a plane. She had never flown before, hating the idea, the very thought of it, yet knowing she was going to have to do it and soon. Her stomach manufactured another layer of butterflies to add to the ones that were already fluttering around in there. It must have been like the insect house at London Zoo.

  The press group formed a line and made their way through the double doors to the departure area. Each was holding a navy blue vest of body armour and a helmet with matching blue cover. Poppy collected hers from a pile as did Miles and they joined the queue.

  ‘Are you all right, Nina?’ He accentuated the word ‘Nina’; his way of reminding her of her new name. She was no longer Poppy Day, not for a while.

  Poppy nodded, unable to speak.

  There was a further security check. Miles handed the man his passport, and responded to the usual questions. Had he packed the bag himself? Did he have any of the following items in his luggage? Knives? Gels? Liquids? To each point raised, Miles answered with a definitive, ‘No.’

  Poppy found the line of questioning interesting, having earlier witnessed soldiers checking in weapons and ammunition. God forbid Miles might inadvertently smuggle on a bottle of hand cream whilst sat next to the gun-toting warriors. Poppy remembered her perfume and lip gloss. ‘Shit!’ She rummaged around until she located the two offending items and held them over the plastic bin, placed for oversights just as this. Her grip tightened as her hand hovered; it was her only bottle of scent, a birthday present from Martin and she didn’t want to throw it away. There was no option. She closed her eyes as the glass bottle clattered against tins and jars similarly disposed of. ‘I’m sorry Mart.’ Poppy sighed at the thought of her fifty quid bottle of contraband, so easily discarded.

  The man tried to wave Miles through but he stayed put. Turning to Poppy, Miles gestured with his hand for her to come forward. She took three faltering steps until she was by his side. Miles addressed the man, ‘This is my colleague Nina Folkstok.’ He turned to Poppy, ‘Pass?’ This he uttered with a vaguely Nordic slant to his phrase.

  Poppy pulled out the laminated plastic square stating, if not confirming, that she was Nina Folkstok from Denmark, fellow journalist of Miles Varrasso, freelance.

  ‘Miss Folkstok had her passport and her documentation stolen this morning from her car. We have already cleared it with Flight Lieutenant Ward, but he said that I should just have a word with you. Nina’s English isn’t too great.’ He spoke the last bit of the sentence out of the side of his mouth as though Poppy wasn’t meant to hear, yet making sure she could.

  Poppy stared blankly at the man; trying to look Danish and like her English wasn’t too great.

  ‘That’s a nightmare. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?’ His sarcasm was well meant.

  Miles smiled at him, ‘Absolutely. It was a really horrid experience for her.’

  ‘Well, I guess if it’s already been covered and she is with you, sir, then it should be fine. I will just check the manifest, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’ Miles smiled at Poppy and then at the guard, who disappeared to check the flight manifest and was reassured to see the name Nina Folkstok on the list, nestled between Mike Fisher and Nick Foster.

  He returned satisfied. ‘Tell her she is clear to go through as long as she can get me Peter Schmeichel’s autograph. I’m Man U through and through!’ He smiled then, happy to show that he was far from ignorant, he knew someone from Denmark, even if he couldn’t have told you where it was on a map.

  Miles turned to Poppy. ‘Você gosta de microplaquetas ou de salada, Peter Schmeichel?’

  Poppy smiled and laughed, nodding her head at the security guard. Miles laughed as well a little too loudly. It was some time before she learnt that he had asked her if she wanted chips or salad, in Portuguese.

  The partners in crime went through and sat on more plastic chairs bolted to the ground. There had been little problem for Poppy, the impostor, gaining entry into this secure and sensitive environment amongst hundreds of servicemen and their weapons unchecked and uncleared, but God forbid they might try to move a chair.

  Jason approached them before they had a chance to confer. ‘Aha! Aren’t you the award-winning journalist Miles Varrasso? Confidant of some of the world’s baddest baddies and expert at writing foolproof copy while a sniper is trained on your arse?’

  ‘You are a funny guy, Jase, leave us alone.’

  ‘Ah! It all becomes horribly clear – leave US alone! Miles, you dark horse, and there was me thinking that you batted for the other side.’

  ‘Jesus, you are incredible. Just because some of us prefer our sleep to going out wherever we are in the world and scoring, does not make me gay.’

  ‘You’re right, that was a bad thing for me to have said, especially in front of Freckles, but you really don’t have to call me Jesus, “sir” is fine.’

  ‘Piss off, Jason, please.’

  ‘OK. I am pissing off but bagsy sit next to you on the plane!’ Jason skipped away from them.

  Poppy was unsure what to make of the whole encounter.

  ‘He is an acquired taste, like anchovies.’

  ‘I’ve never had anchovies.’

  Miles looked at Poppy as though it was the most shocking thing that he had heard. Forget the fact that she was illegally schlepping out to Afghanistan under a false identity to try and bring her captive husband home. Never had anchovies? My God! They were from different worlds.

  Poppy decided to give him another shock. ‘I’ve never flown on a plane before either.’

  He continued to stare at her, but his expression didn’t look quite as critical as it had at her anchovy revelation. ‘There is nothing to it, you just sit back and someone else does all the work. Before you know it, you are right where you expected to be and how you got there is forgotten. Besides, I will be with you and there is nothing to worry about.’ He pushed his glasses up further onto his nose and smiled at her. He reminded Poppy of a calm and interested teacher, a bit like Nicholas Nickleby, a righter of wrongs, the voice of the underdog. Was that what she was; the underdog? A cause? She smiled, knowing that she was both.

  When they finally boarded, Poppy felt a flutter of excitement, she had almost done it! She was going to get Martin; she would bring her husband home. The first plane was a regular civilian passenger jet, like any that she had seen on TV, and Miles was right, the actual flying wasn’t too bad. The noise of take-off unnerved her but everyone else’s calm demeanour was infectious.

  Within minutes of the plane lifting from the tarmac, Poppy fell into a deep sleep. It was a combination of exhaustion, nerves and an instinctive sense that this was to be one of the last sound sleeps that she would have for a while. She slept through both the food and movie. Miles gently shook her as the plane approached Kuwait, where they were to get their connecting flight. There would be no food, movie or sleeping on this one.

  Kuwait was hot and smelt foreign, different. Despite having seen hundreds of men dressed in every type of regional costume from all over the world within five feet of her own front door, Poppy found the men in Arabic garb fascinating. It was the first time that she had been the foreigner.

  Miles checked regularly on his charge, assuming a brotherly role that both were comfortable with. It made her feel safe. This was a feeling that was not to last much past the next twenty-four hours. They boarded the Hercules in full body armour and helmets, which for Poppy felt bizarre, uncomfortable and restrictive; as though she was dressing up or playing a part, which was funny because, of course, that was exactly what she was doing. She may have looked like Nina Folkstok, hardened war journa
list on the outside, but on the inside she was most definitely Poppy Day, shit-scared hairdresser from Walthamstow.

  Eleven

  IT SUDDENLY WENT dark, not pitch black, but the light was minimal, just enough to make out shadow and form. Poppy felt a new level of scared, she was terrified. She had a scale for fear that was concerned, alarmed, scared, frightened, terrified and petrified. She thought she was as scared as she possibly could be, but within a few days of her arrival, would discover a whole new level of fear, where you almost wished for death because the escape would be better than the degree of terror you were experiencing.

  They were packed like lambs in transit, only they weren’t standing on the slippery floor of a moving truck, but were instead strapped into seats. The seatbelts were woven canvas, harness-like; the sort of thing Poppy could imagine wearing if she were parachuting. Poppy and Miles were clad in body armour and helmets as per their instructions. Those that carried weapons had them clamped between their knees or placed in the racks behind the seating that lined the walls. Poppy hated seeing the guns, being so close to them.

  She closed her eyes and once again had the vision of when Martin was taken. She saw it quite clearly, his tanned face, his desperate tone, ‘Over here! Jonesy! I’m over here!’ His eyes wide, with the whites around his iris exposed. He looked petrified. Again she saw the blow to the stomach, and then nothing but darkness and quiet. Poppy was jolted back to the present. She didn’t want to picture his capture, not then.

  At the back of the plane were two large metal pallets on rails, with bags and equipment strapped under taut cargo nets. They looked like captured beasts; irregular shapes straining under their ropes, two giant bundles waiting to be launched. The plane suddenly jerked to the right, then immediately to the left and then back to the right, zigzagging in the air in a jumpy, uncontrolled way. It was, of course, neither of these things, not jumpy or random in any way, but carefully planned in its execution. It took a huge amount of skill to fly the cumbersome behemoth in that way.

  Miles reached across and took her hand. Despite her dislike of physical contact from strangers, she was very glad to know that there was someone else there in the dark. There were nearly a hundred or so occupants being thrown this way and that, but despite being in a large group, Poppy felt alone. She felt lonely as well as scared.

  He squeezed her hand slightly in a very reassuring way and she smiled in the darkness. The plane was silent, apart from the obvious engine noise and the creaks and groans of the metal. There were no human noises, no talking, no moving and hardly any breathing. The atmosphere was electric. It was better that Poppy was unaware that the darkness and manoeuvring were to avoid any insurgent’s tracking device that may be watching and waiting for their arrival.

  Poppy considered the silence and how it felt. It’s easy to be silent when you are alone, but she had never been in a situation before where there was a communal silence; it made it more eerie, more special. She suspected that mass worship must be similar, but the only sombre service she had ever attended was on Remembrance Day and her experience was very different. It was never solemn, meaningful or an opportunity to ‘remember’. It was always, always more about avoiding the comments, waiting for the next joker to say something that she had heard a million times before. It was always far from special and was completely crap for her, actually.

  The mass hush was for a number of reasons. It was certainly the first time that the situation became real, dropping and swerving in a dark plane over a war zone. For those that had never been on tour before it was a sobering moment, realisation that there was no going back. They had arrived, but were they ready?

  For those that had experienced it before, the banter and excitement of the travelling was over as realisation dawned that it would be a very long time before they were on a plane heading in the opposite direction, back towards their family and loved ones. This was the primary reason for the noiseless reflection; the collective visualising of those that had been left behind. The wives, husbands, children and parents, the girlfriends and boyfriends; all were being missed. The longing had started. It was a dull ache that no letters, emails or phone calls could cure. This was quickly followed by the ‘what if?’ thoughts: ‘What if I don’t get home alive? What if I am home soon but injured? What if something happens while I am away? What if no one misses me or, worse still, fills the gap that I have left? What if I am replaced or forgotten?’

  When they disembarked from the Hercules, Poppy was overwhelmed by strong emotions. She was euphoric, wide awake, excited, nervous and full of energy. She had to stop herself from running forward and shouting at the top of her voice, ‘I am coming, Mart! Hang in there, baby, I am on my way!’ She felt so close that he would be able to hear her. She had done it; she had managed to get to Afbloodyghanistan!

  She put her hand in her mouth to stop the shouts and whoops from escaping; such was her joy and excitement. She wanted to run up to every soldier and say, ‘Do you know Martin Cricket? Do you know where he is? It’s all right, you can tell me what you know, I’m his wife!’ It was still a few hours before she realised that she didn’t have a plan and that she was in danger, but in those first few hours of arrival, it was really incredible.

  When Poppy had sat in The Unpopulars with her nan, thinking that she should go and get her husband back, she didn’t think beyond getting to the country in which he was being held. If she was being totally honest, she didn’t think that she’d get that far. How would she? No passport, no money, no transport, no friends and no legitimate reason to be there. It was such a huge and impossible task that she daren’t believe that she would arrive. Yet there she was, only eighteen hours after closing her front door.

  She shook her head and thought about her achievement; she had got through passport control and security with an assumed identity, been given food, drink and protection, had flown there on a military plane and made a friend who would help her in ways that she couldn’t even begin to imagine. As for a legitimate reason, what better reason could there be other than to bring her husband home?

  Poppy wanted to see everything; wanted to ask a million questions. She was abroad, she was in a war zone, but, most critically, she was in the place where her husband had lived and worked up until a couple of weeks before. It was all-consuming; amazing and scary all at the same time. She desperately wanted to see where Martin had slept. She would have liked to touch his things, place her head on his pillow or against his clothing to see if she could smell him, but of course she could do none of these things because she was Nina Folkstok, impartial journalist from Denmark.

  Minutes after leaving the plane, things happened very quickly. It felt like organised chaos. Poppy’s nostrils filled with the smell of jet wash and the baked clay of the earth. Despite the hour of the night, it was still uncomfortably hot. Hundreds of people milled around, yet the groupings were not indiscriminate, there were queues of sorts. Poppy and her party were whisked into the terminal. Large groups of soldiers were taken off into side rooms, briefed then shipped from the airport to the base in buses, like the ultimate school trip. Civilians were being met by minibus or private cars. Some of them were contractors, working for security companies, or engineers off to help with the infrastructure, logistics or military support. Poppy stared after them, truly unable to understand why they would go out to a place like that unless they absolutely had to. The money was good, agreed, but the possibility that they too might be forced to go through what she and Martin were going through was a price that was too high. What amount of money was worth losing your life or liberty for?

  Poppy shadowed Miles like a child nervous of being separated from its mum.

  He turned to her. ‘Are you all right, Nina?’

  She nodded, knowing that he was checking she was OK, but also reminding her to stay in character.

  The journalists were taken into a room for a briefing; the soldier that delivered the session seemed tired, fed up at having to repeat the same information
on a daily basis. His voice was flat, he sounded bored and uninterested. He informed them if the siren sounded, when it sounded, they should respond by getting as flat as they could on the ground as quickly as possible. Body armour and helmets, if not being worn, were to be kept to hand at all times. Poppy listened intently to the fact that they would receive daily briefings and military personnel would be made available who would act as their media buddies, guides and protectors. Poppy prayed that none of them would be Danish nationals; she knew she couldn’t get by for long by repeating West Jutland and nodding.

  The journalists were a group to which Poppy started to mentally align, believing her assumed role, although her mission was slightly different to everyone else’s. The group was herded on to a separate bus and taken into the camp. The Media Centre was where they would live and work for the duration of their trip.

  Miles sat next to her on the bus. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m all right, actually. A bit nervous, but I’m fine.’

  He smiled his lovely open smile that crinkled up his eyes and changed his whole face from serious to happy. ‘That’s good to hear. There are a couple of things that I wanted to say. Firstly, don’t talk to too many people, far better they think you are serious and aloof than blow your cover.’

  Poppy laughed out loud because he had said ‘blow your cover’. It sounded so hilarious and, once again, she felt as if she was in some crappy spy movie.

  ‘Poppy, this is not a joke, you will be in serious danger if you do not do and say exactly what I tell you. Do you understand?’

  His reprimand made her tears gather. Her emotions were extreme, strong feelings at either end of the spectrum hovered near the surface, one minute laughter, the next crying. Poppy was unaware of how much danger she was in and didn’t fully appreciate how much danger she was placing others in. It still felt like a spontaneous adventure, making her sound naive, juvenile and, with the glorious gift of hindsight, she would admit she was a bit of both. OK, a lot of both.