Not much had changed since I had run away all those years before. The trees had grown up a bit, and the border of bushes down the far side of the house was less of a jungle than I had remembered. Perhaps it was just the effects of the winter months.
I had loved that border as a child and had made no end of "dens" amongst the thick undergrowth, fantasizing great adventures and forever lying in wait for an unseen "enemy," my toy rifle at the ready.
Not much may have changed in the place, but plenty had changed within me.
I stood in the cold and dark and drew deeply on a cigarette, cupping the glowing end in my hand so that it wasn't visible. Not that anyone would be looking; it was just a force of habit.
I didn't really consider myself a smoker, and I'd never had a cigarette until I first went on ops to Iraq. Then that had changed. Somehow the threat of possibly developing lung cancer in the future was a minor one compared to the risk of having one's head blown off in the morning.
It had seemed that almost everyone smoked in Afghanistan. It had helped to control the fear, to steady the hand, and to relieve the pressure when a cold beer, or any other alcohol, for that matter, was strictly against standing orders. At least I hadn't smoked opium like the locals. That was also against standing orders.
I leaned against the corner of the house and drew a deep breath into my lungs, feeling the familiar rush as the nicotine flooded into my bloodstream and was transported to my brain. Finding the opportunity for a crafty smoke in the hospital had been rare, but here, now, I was my own master again, and I reveled in the freedom.
A light went on in the first-floor room above my head.
"Why the bloody hell did he have to turn up? That's all we bloody need at the moment."
I could clearly hear my mother in full flow.
"Keep your voice down, he'll hear you."
That was my stepfather.
"No, he won't," she said, again at full volume. "He's gone outside."
"Josephine," my stepfather said angrily, "half the bloody village will hear you if you're not careful."
I was quite surprised that he would talk to her like that. Perhaps there was more to him than I thought. My mother even took notice of him, and they continued their conversation much more quietly. Annoyingly, I couldn't hear anything other than a faint murmur, although I stood there silently for quite a while longer, just in case they reverted to fortissimo.
But sadly, they didn't, and presently, the lights in the room went out.
I lifted the leather flap that covered the face of my watch. The luminous hands showed me it was only ten-thirty. Clearly, racehorse trainers went to bed as early as hospital patients, even on Saturday nights. I was neither, and I enjoyed being outside in the dark, listening and watching.
I had always been completely at home in darkness, and I couldn't understand those who were frightened of it. I suppose it was one thing I should thank my mother for. When I was a child, she had always insisted I sleep with my bedroom lights off and my door firmly closed. Since then the dark had always been my friend.
I stood silently and listened to the night.
In the distance there was music, dance music, the thump, thump, thump of the rhythm clearly audible in the still air. Perhaps someone was having a party. A car drove along the road at the bottom of the driveway, and I watched its red lights as it traveled beyond the village, up the hill and out of sight.
I thought I heard a fox nearby with its high-pitched scream, but I wasn't sure. It might have been a badger. I would have needed a pair of army-issue night-vision goggles to be sure, or better still a U.S. military set, which were far superior.
I lit another cigarette, the flare of the match instantly rendering me blind in the night. Out in Afghanistan I'd had a fancy lighter that could light a cigarette in complete darkness. Needless to say, it hadn't accompanied me on my evacuation. In fact, nothing I had owned in Afghanistan had so far made it back to me.
An infantry soldier's life at war was carried around with him in his backpack, his Bergen. Either that or on his body in the form of helmet, radio, body armor, spare ammunition, boots and camouflage uniform. Then there was his rifle and bayonet to carry in his hands. It all went everywhere with him. Leave a Bergen unattended for even a second and it was gone, spirited away like magic by some innocent-looking Afghan teenager. Leaving a rifle unattended could be a court-martial offense. Everything and anything would "walk" if not tied down or guarded.
The Taliban have described the British soldier as a ferocious fighter but one who moves very slowly. Well, Mr. Taliban, you try running around with seven stone of equipment on your back. It was like carrying your grandmother into battle, but without the benefits.
I wondered where my Bergen had gone. For that matter, I wondered where my uniform had gone, and everything else too. Thanks largely to the dedicated and magnificent volunteers of the CCAST, the Critical Care Air Support Teams, I had arrived back in England not only alive but less than thirty hours after the explosion. But I'd woken up in the Birmingham hospital, naked and without a foot, with not even a toothbrush, just a pair of metal dog tags around my neck, embossed with my name and army service number, an age-old and trusted method of identifying the living, and the dead.
There had been a letter to my mother in the breast pocket of my uniform, to be posted in the event of my death. I wondered where that was too. My mother obviously hadn't received it. But there again, I hadn't died. Not quite.
Eventually, it was the cold that drove me inside.
I went slowly and quietly through the house so as not to disturb those sleeping upstairs. In the past I would have removed my shoes and padded around silently in bare feet, but now, as I could have only one bare foot, I kept my shoes on.
Good as it was, my new right leg had an annoying habit of making a metallic clinking noise every time I put it down, even when I moved slowly. I didn't sound quite like a clanking old truck engine, but an enemy sentry would still have heard me coming from more than a hundred paces on a still night. I would have to do something about that, on top of everything else, if I was ever to convince the MOD major.
I went up the stairs to my old bedroom. My childhood things were long gone, packed up by my mother and either sent to the charity shop or to the council tip just as soon as I had announced I wasn't coming back.
However, the bed looked the same, and the chest of drawers in the corner definitely was, the end now repainted where I had once stuck up bubble-gum cards of army regimental crests.
This wasn't the first night I had been back in this bed. There had been other occasional visits, all started with good intentions but invariably ending in argument and recrimination. To be fair, I was as much, if not more, to blame than my mother and stepfather. There was just something about the three of us together that caused the ire in us to rise inexorably to the point of mutual explosion. And none of us were very good firemen. Rather, we would fan the flames and pour petrol on them in gay abandon. And not one of us was ever prepared to back down or apologize. Nearly always I would end up leaving in anger, vowing never to return.
My most recent visit, five years previously, had been optimistically expected to last five days. I had arrived on Christmas Eve all smiles, with bags of presents and good intent, and I'd left before lunch on Christmas morning, sent on my way by a tirade of abuse. And the silly thing was, I couldn't now remember why we had argued. We didn't seem to need a reason, not a big one anyway.
Perhaps tomorrow would be better. I hoped so, but I doubted it. The lesson of experience over expectation was one I had finally begun to learn.
Maybe I shouldn't have come, but somehow I had needed to. This place was where I'd grown up, and in some odd way it still represented safety and security. And in spite of the shouting, the arguments and the fights, it was the only home I'd ever had.