30. Carl
30. Carl
One night, when I was getting close to the end of my last tour, Sarah came to see me.
She was due home the following day and was worried about Danny. She didn’t know where he was. Would I help her find him?
‘I’m going back to England tomorrow but I can’t leave without knowing he’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to put this on you, but I won’t be here and I’m worried about him.’
As she spoke there was rising emotion in her voice.
I swung my legs over the bunk and stood to face her. She looked exhausted; there were bruised purple crescents beneath her eyes, which I’d never noticed before, and her skin was pale.
‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.
‘This morning. We were having breakfast together, but then a message went out on the tannoy for medical staff to report to the hospital, so I had to leave. I haven’t seen him since.’
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen him all day either, which was unusual. With Fridge and Squadron gone, Cherub was spending whatever spare time he could with Jenni. And Jobbo mostly wanted to be on his own, so Danny and I often hung out together.
We played volleyball or football, worked out in the gym. Sometimes we gamed or watched a movie. We rarely talked, and never about anything significant. All the things we’d seen, all that chaos and danger. Where would we even start?
‘How did he seem at breakfast?’ I asked Sarah.
‘Okay. Maybe a bit more fidgety than usual, and he wasn’t eating. But you know how he is – he’s permanently on edge these days.’
Sarah was right. Danny was permanently on edge. But then we all were.
Just that morning, five British troops had been killed in double blasts while out on patrol. Three others were killed yesterday by a hidden roadside bomb. Eight dead in two days. I wasn’t sure what victory meant any more. But I was pretty sure this wasn’t winning.
Sarah stared at me, and I realized in that moment that no matter what I’d told myself that first time I’d met her in the canteen, and no matter how many times I’d reminded myself since, every time she smiled at me, every time we exchanged a glance, even though she was with Danny, I would always have feelings for her.
I knew I could never be more than a friend. But still, I wanted to be there for her, to help her. I wanted to make her feel better. To make her smile.
‘Don’t worry. He’s probably in the gym or caught up in a game of Xbox.’
A flicker of relief crossed her face.
‘Are you okay?’
She smiled, a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and nodded. A strand of hair that had worked itself loose from her ponytail fell across her face. I longed to reach out and smooth it back into place.
‘Thank you, Carl,’ she said.
There was something so touching in the way she said my name, something so trusting in the way she looked at me. Maybe it was because she had come to me for help, had shown faith in me at a time when I had none. Or maybe it was just that I had lost so many people, and so many others were dying every day, that I felt raw, exposed.
Whatever it was, I felt a palpable closeness between us. A connection that seemed so real to me in that moment that I was sure, if I reached out, I would have been able to touch it.
‘Right,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘You check the mess and the canteen. I’ll head to the gym and do a quick circuit of the camp perimeter.’ I smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Try not to worry. I’ll find him.’
She smiled too, and then she turned and began to walk in the direction of the canteen.
For a heartbeat I let myself watch her. Just a heartbeat. But I knew I would always remember how she looked in that moment, still wearing the too-baggy uniform that seemed as if it belonged to somebody else.
It wasn’t until she had gone that I realized I might never see Sarah again. Tomorrow she would be going home, and soon Danny would follow her.
They would build a new life together. A life after war.
Setting off to look for Danny, I wondered what that life would look like for me. I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
I found Danny sitting alone in the Afghan village. Built as a replica to give us a feel of what to expect when we went out on patrol. At night, deserted, its food stalls empty and bread ovens unmanned, it felt almost ghostly.
‘Hey,’ I called out to him.
He didn’t look up.
I lowered myself down on to the dusty ground next to him. ‘Everything all right?’ I asked.
His head was in his hands, so that when he spoke his voice sounded muffled.
‘Do you ever wonder why us?’ he asked.
I shuffled closer to him, put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Why us what?’
‘Why you and me are still here, when Fridge and Squadron and Caroline and all the others … while they’re gone?’
Luck guilt, they call it. Dumb luck that we survived and they didn’t. I wondered about it all the time. Still wished that it had been Fridge who had made it back, instead of me.
Danny’s hands were shaking. I thought of something Cherub had said when someone made a joke about the chances of us making it back from our last patrol.
‘Probability compression,’ he’d said, out of nowhere.
We had all looked at him blankly. ‘What’s that, Professor?’ I’d asked, and everyone had laughed.
‘Basically, it means you don’t want to be the last bloke to die, so you get more and more superstitious as the tour goes on,’ he explained.
It made sense.
‘I do wonder,’ I answered Danny, covering his hands with mine. ‘Especially now, now that we’re nearly at the end.’
He looked up at me then, and I could see he had been crying.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘None of it. But surely it has to mean something, right? That we survived. Somehow we owe it to them to make it mean something. To live a full life. Carl, I so want that life to be with Sarah. It’s all I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. A simple life, nothing fancy. Just a house, kids, you know?’
Nothing fancy. And yet what Danny was describing was what we all wanted. If we made it back home.
‘But she’s going home tomorrow,’ he continued, ‘and I’m scared to be out here on my own. I’m scared that, without her to remind me what my old life looked like, I’ll forget. Forget who I am, forget what being normal is. I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread.’ He was becoming more agitated. ‘And Carl?’
‘Yes,’ I answered gently.
‘What if I don’t make it back?’
I squeezed his shoulder. ‘You will make it back.’
He stared at me, his eyes wild. He looked more scared than he’d ever looked before.
‘You’ll make it back, Danny,’ I said. ‘Back home to be with Sarah. I’ll make sure of it. I promise.’
It was that simple. Because friendship – love – is simple. It’s about putting someone else’s happiness above your own. Danny’s happiness. And Danny’s happiness meant Sarah.
That night, I promised Danny that he would make it home to be with her. That he would have the family life he craved with Sarah. I would make sure of it.
I hadn’t been able to save Fridge, or Squadron, or Tom, or Caroline. But I might just be able to save Danny.
So I made him a promise.
Danny became my project.
My mission.