Crossfire - Страница 4

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Almost immediately she had married again, to my father, a local seed merchant, and had produced me like a present on her twenty-ninth birthday. But I had never been a much-wanted, much-loved child. I think my mother looked upon me as just another of her charges to be fed and watered twice a day, mucked out and exercised as required, and expected to stay quietly in my stable for the rest of the time.

I suppose it had been a lonely childhood, but I hadn't known anything different and, mostly, I'd been happy enough. What I missed in human contact at home I made up for with dogs and horses, both of which had plenty of time for me. I would make up games with them. They were my friends. I could remember thinking the world had ended when Susie, my beloved beagle, had been killed by a car. What had made it much worse was that my mother, far from comforting me, had instead told me to pull myself together, it was only a dog.

When my parents divorced there had been a long and protracted argument over custody of me. It was not until many years later that I realized that they had argued because neither of them had wanted the responsibility of bringing up an eight-year-old misfit. My mother had lost the argument, so I had lived with her, and my father had disappeared from my life for good. I hadn't thought it a great loss at the time, and I still didn't. He had written to me a few times and had sent an occasional Christmas or birthday card, but he clearly thought he was better off without me, and I was sure I was without him.

So, darling, how was Afghanistan? You know, to start with, before you were injured?" my mother asked rather tactlessly. "Were you able to enjoy yourself at all?"

My mother had always managed to call me "darling" without any of the emotion the word was designed to imply. In her case there was perhaps even a degree of sarcasm in the way she pronounced it with a long r in the middle.

"I wasn't sent there to enjoy myself," I said, slightly irritated. "I was there to fight the Taliban."

"Yes, darling. I know that," she said. "But did you have any good times?"

We were sitting around the kitchen table having dinner, and my mother and stepfather both looked at me expectantly.

It was a bit like asking President Lincoln's wife if she had been enjoying the play before her husband was shot. What should I say?

In truth, I had enjoyed myself immensely before I was blown up, but I wondered if I should actually say so.

Recording my first confirmed "kill" of a Taliban had been exhilarating; and calling in the helicopter gunships to pound an enemy position with body-bursting fifty-millimeter shells had been spine-chillingly exciting. It had sent my adrenaline levels to maximum in preparation for the charge through to finish them off at close quarters.

One wasn't meant to enjoy killing other human beings, but I had.

"I suppose it was OK," I said. "Lots of sitting round doing nothing, really. That, and playing cards."

"Did you see anything of the Taliban?" my stepfather asked.

"A little," I said matter-of-factly. "But mostly at a distance."

A distance of about two feet, impaled on my bayonet.

"But didn't you get to do any shooting?" he asked. He made it sound like a day's sport of driven pheasant.

"Some," I said.

I thought back to the day my platoon had been ambushed and outnumbered by the enemy. I had sat atop an armored car, laying down covering fire with a GPMG, a general-purpose machine gun, known to us all as "the gimpy." I had done so much shooting that day that the gimpy's barrel had glowed red-hot.

I could have told them all of it.

I could have told them of the fear. Not so much the fear of being wounded or killed-more the fear of failing to act. The fear of fear itself.

Throughout history, every soldier has asked themselves the same questions: What will I do when the time comes to fight? How will I perform in the face of the enemy? Shall I kill, or be killed? Shall I be courageous, or will I let down my fellow men?

In the modern British Army, much of the officer training is designed to make young men, and young women, behave in a rational and determined manner in extreme conditions and when under huge stress. Command is what they are taught, the ability to command when all hell is breaking loose around them. The command moment, it is called, that moment in time when something dramatic occurs, such as an ambush, or a roadside bomb explosion, the moment when all the men turn and look to their officer-that's you-waiting to be told what to do, and how to react. There's no one else to ask. You have to make the decisions, and men's lives will depend on them.

The training also teaches teamwork and, in particular, reliance. Not reliance on others but the belief that others are reliant on you. When push comes to shove, a soldier doesn't stick his head up and shoot back at the enemy for his Queen and Country. Instead, he does it for his mates, his fellow soldiers all around him who will die if he doesn't.

My biological family might have considered me a loner, but I was not. My platoon was my chosen family, and I had regularly placed myself in extreme danger to protect them from harm.

Eventually, my luck had been bound to run out.

Killing the enemy with joy and gusto might lead an onlooker to believe that the soldier places a low worth on human life. But this would be misleading, and untrue. The death of a comrade, a friend, a brother has the most profound effect on the fighting man. Such moments are revisited time and again with the same question always uppermost: Could I have done anything to save him?

Why him and not me? The guilt of the survivor is ever-present and is expunged only by continuation of the job in hand-the killing of the enemy.

"You're not very talkative," my mother said. "I thought that soldiers liked nothing better than to recount stories of past battles."

"There's not much to tell you, really," I said.

Not much to tell, I thought, that wouldn't put her off her dinner.

"I saw you both on the television today," I said, changing the subject, "at Cheltenham. Good win in the novice chase. Shame about Pharmacist, though. At one point I thought he was going to win as well." I knew that it was not a tactful comment, but I was curious to see their reaction.

My mother kept her eyes down as she absentmindedly pushed a potato around and around on her plate.

"Your mother doesn't want to talk about it," my stepfather said in an attempt to terminate conversation on the topic.

He was unsuccessful.

"Your head lad seems to think the horse was nobbled," I said.

My mother's head came up quickly. "Ian doesn't know what he's talking about," she said angrily. "And he shouldn't have been talking to you."

I hoped that I hadn't dropped Ian into too much hot water. But I wasn't finished yet.

"Shouldn't have been talking to me about what?" I asked.

No reply. My mother went back to studying her plate of food, and my stepfather sat stony-faced across the table from her.

"So are the horses being nobbled?" I asked into the silence.

"No, of course not," my mother said. "Pharmacist simply had a bad day. He'll be fine next time out."

I wondered if she was trying to convince me, or herself.

I stoked the fire a little more. "Ian Norland said it wasn't the first time that your horses haven't run as well as expected."

"Ian knows nothing." She was almost shouting. "We've just had some bad luck of late. Perhaps there's a bit of a bug going round the stable. That's all. It'll pass."

She was getting distressed, and I thought it would be better to lay off, just for a bit.

"And Mrs. Kauri doesn't need you spreading any rumors," my stepfather interjected, somewhat clumsily. My mother gave him a look that was close to contempt.

I also looked at my stepfather, and I wondered what he really thought of his wife still using the name of another man.

Only when the other children at my primary school had asked me why I was Thomas Forsyth, and not Thomas Kauri, had I ever questioned the matter. "My father is Mr. Forsyth," I'd told them. "Then why isn't your mother Mrs. Forsyth?" It had been a good question, and one I hadn't been able to answer.

Mrs. Josephine Kauri had been born Miss Jane Brown and was now, by rights, Mrs. Derek Philips, although woe betide anyone who called her that in her hearing. Since first becoming a bride at seventeen, Josephine Kauri had worn the trousers in each of her three marriages, and it was no coincidence that she had retained the marital home in both of her divorces. From the look she had just delivered across the kitchen table, I thought it might not be too long before her divorce lawyer was again picking up his telephone. Mr. Derek Philips may soon be outstaying his welcome at Kauri House Stables.

We ate in silence for a while, finishing off the chicken casserole that my mother's cleaner-cum-housekeeper had prepared that morning and which had been slow-cooking in the Aga all afternoon. Thankfully, there had been more than enough for an uninvited guest.

But I couldn't resist having one more go.

"So will Pharmacist still run in the Gold Cup?"

I thought my stepfather might kick me under the table, such was the fury in his eyes. My mother, however, was more controlled.

"We'll see," she said, echoing the major from the MOD. "It all depends on how he is in the morning. Until then, I can't say another word."

"Is he not back here yet, then?" I asked, not taking the hint to keep quiet.

"Yes," she said without further explanation.

"And have you been out to see him?" I persisted.