‘If you were listening you might have heard something. Something that might make you stop.’
As she shakes her head in confusion, the knife serrates the skin at an angle, drawing tiny pinpricks of blood.
‘I knew Britney’s dad. I served with him.’
She shakes her head more vigorously, her eyes bulging like those of a trapped animal. The blood runs between her fingers. ‘I hardly bloody knew him myself. Said he was serving but they all say that, don’t they? Told him I was expecting and he done a runner.’
I say, ‘Adrian Hartley. Only Allah knows how I loved that man.’
The knife drops to the floor and her body starts to shake uncontrollably. I grab a tea towel off the sink and wrap it around her neck, applying pressure. I gently guide her back up to the bedroom, where I make her sit up in bed, her back against the headboard. She is wide awake and I pour her a large drink. She wants to know everything, ‘for Britney’s sake, to tell her when she’s older’. She tells me they were never in love and I can say it how it was. Propped next to her, my arm around her, I begin at the beginning.
*
‘Nature, what makes it different?’ bellowed Training Corporal Longbone.
I looked across at the open fields and then back at the woods from where we had come. The long route march, the last of week three, had worn me out. My feet, in boots that were not yet broken in, hurt with every step, and the sweat was still running into my eyes as I stood in formation as though ready for inspection. Around me, the men of Recruit Company C, to which Adrian and I belonged, eased their weight painfully from one leg to the other.
The corporal dug his thumbs into his webbing and paced up and down the line. He was tall, with big shoulders and a strong, boyish face. ‘In nature nothing is straight. Not a blade of grass, not a twig; everything is bent, fucked.’
He stopped at me and extended a hand to finger the collar of my khaki shirt. ‘In the field nothing is black,’ for a moment his eyes caught mine, ‘or white. Remember it well, in the field it could save your life.’
Without warning, the corporal threw himself down and began to wrench clumps of long grass out of the ground, stuffing it into his webbing, around his weapon, pack and helmet. He pulled elastic bands out of his pocket and strapped leaves and twigs around his arms and legs. Then, like a tribesman, he smeared black camo, from a lipstick-like device, across his face.
‘On my command, close your eyes, count to ten and open them,’ he ordered. ‘No peeking or I’ll have you on a fucking charge. Go.’
I listened to the light thud of his footsteps as I counted, but after four they were imperceptible. Opening my eyes, I scanned the field, but Longbone was no longer visible. I looked up at the Yorkshire sky, blue and dotted with cotton wool clouds like a child’s painting. One of the other recruits reported movement at nine o’clock but no one else could confirm it.
Then I heard a brief war cry, and directly ahead of us the corporal sprang to his feet. A haphazard mixture of man and vegetation, he ran towards us — towards me, I felt — his rifle extended before him: ‘Bang. Bang. Bang.’ He stopped and caught his breath.
‘That was twenty yards. Machine-gun fire is accurate at over five hundred yards. A sniper could be a mile away.’ He looked around at us. ‘Fall out, buddy up — I want to see you all camo up.’
‘I spotted him,’ said Adrian, tucking small branches of heather into the rear of my webbing, ‘at twelve o’clock.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘He’s the corporal,’ he said.
‘Corporal, sir,’ I said, turning to Longbone. He was sitting on his haunches, about five yards away, smoking a cigarette.
‘Recruit Khan?’
‘Where do we get camo from?’
He reached into a tunic pocket and pulled out the camo stick, squeezing it in his giant fist. I watched his face change; it softened, almost as though he was about to laugh, and then froze into a stern expression. ‘You serious, Recruit Khan?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Do you think you need it, Recruit Khan?’
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Again I shrugged.
‘Shrug your shoulders at me once more and I’ll carve them off you — you fucking Paki.’ He spun the camo stick between his fingers. The entire company had stopped and they stared at me. I looked away, wiping the sweat from my brow.
The corporal jumped up like a gymnast onto his feet. ‘Listen up!’ he cried in his usual booming voice. ‘Let’s see who was paying attention in class this morning. Does our quota of Paki,’ he coughed, ‘Recruit Akram Khan, does he require camo paint?’
There was a long silence, broken finally by Adrian’s voice. ‘Corporal, sir, camo not only makes our colour less visible but it breaks up the distinct outline of the human face.’
The other recruits laughed. The corporal drew on his cigarette, staring at Adrian through narrowed eyes. ‘Recruit Hartley, are you a homo?’
Adrian said nothing.
‘Do you love the arse of another man?’
There was silence.
‘Answer me, Recruit, or I’ll have you on a fucking charge.’
‘No, Corporal, sir.’
‘I love my wife and I love England. Do you?’
‘Yes, Corporal, sir.’
‘You love my wife?’ The corporal’s voice rose into a crescendo.
Adrian opened his mouth. I stared at him, willing him to shut it. ‘No fucking way.’ He looked at me and then again at the corporal, and crouching to tear at a clump of grass in the ground he half whispered, ‘But that Paki, he’d have you.’
There was a hushed silence and I could hear the wind whistling loudly through the trees. Recruit Company C stood perfectly still and looked expectantly at the corporal. Longbone’s face flushed pink. He dropped the butt of his cigarette, ground it underfoot and then stared at it. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, he said to Adrian, ‘He’d have you, Training Corporal Longbone, sir.’
He turned to the others and clapped his hands. ‘Okay, not only do we have to look like the field but to blend in we also have to smell like it. Any ideas?’
As we watched, the corporal’s face contorted in concentration. Then a wet patch grew at his groin and urine splashed below the hem of his combat trousers onto his boots. He smiled. ‘Pissing in numbers, on my command: one, two, three, piss.’
‘Dickhead, you’ll get us both killed,’ I muttered. The grass at Adrian’s feet, now wet, glistened deep green. ‘You had no right telling the corporal I’d have him.’ I bristled with anger and fear at what the corporal might do next.
Adrian, who fought anyone put in front of him, just didn’t get it. ‘You ungrateful Paki.’
‘You’ve made it worse.’ I turned away.
‘You could have him,’ he said, spinning me around to face him. ‘You could fucking smash him.’
‘Do you dare?’ I glanced towards the corporal.
He shook his head. ‘It’s your fight.’
‘If I had to fight. Well, like you say, no pain. But I’d have to believe it would achieve something,’ I said.
Adrian put a fist up before his face and stared at it, slowly nodding.
‘You remember that kid Dax?’ I said. ‘You even beat him up.’
He nodded guiltily, withdrawing his fist to his side.
‘Were you there when they all had him?’ I asked.
‘I had detention,’ said Adrian boastfully. ‘Besides, I fight alone.’
I gazed into the far distance, at a pattern of white streaks in the sky left behind by an aeroplane. ‘I’d fight the corporal if I knew Dax was watching.’
‘There was something special about Dax, wasn’t there?’ he continued.
‘He let on that he couldn’t cry.’
‘I remember now. That was his weak point,’ said Adrian softly.