53. Carl
53. Carl
Sarah isn’t coming.
As if rooted to the spot, I carry on standing by the ticket barrier, pathetically clutching my two paper cups, until finally I am moved along by a guard.
Slowly, I walk back to the main concourse, throwing the full cups of steaming coffee into a nearby bin. But I can’t bring myself to leave, not yet. So I take a seat on a bench next to the station’s giant Christmas tree.
As I sit down I feel my mobile phone in my pocket. My heart leaps pathetically at the possibility that if I look at it there will be a message from Sarah. A simple explanation for her missing the train, a mishap that we’ll laugh about later.
There is no message.
A sea of passengers spill out from the platforms into the station concourse. They pass by me, and I stare at their faces splitting into smiles as they see their loved ones waiting for them. Their worlds are lighting up as mine grows dark.
It’s bad enough to consider that she’s changed her mind. That she doesn’t want to be with me. But what if it’s not that? What if something bad has happened to her? What if Danny has hurt her again?
I stare at the Christmas tree, at its dancing baubles and bright lights, and think of my own tree at home. The sadness, the loneliness is the same as when I was a little boy watching Mum go out for the evening. Knowing that she wouldn’t be back before I fell asleep, even though she said she would.
It’s always going to be like this from now on, isn’t it?
The world, which just twenty-four hours earlier seemed to finally have a place for me in it, feels heavy and dark again, just like it used to then.
‘Everything all right, lad?’ It’s the same guard who ushered me along from the platform earlier. ‘You’ve been sitting there a while.’
He looks tired, his eyes sunken, defeated by age. Or loneliness perhaps?
There’s something about the sympathy in his voice, it’s just too much. I fight an overwhelming urge to cry.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I say, springing up from the bench. ‘Just leaving. Thank you.’
‘You take care of yourself now,’ I hear him call after me.
When I get back to the van there is a parking ticket on the windscreen, and I almost want to laugh. Of course there’s a bloody ticket on it. What did I expect?
That Sarah and I would live happily ever after? When has anything ever worked out like that for me?
I snatch the ticket from behind the windscreen wipers and scrunch it into a ball. ‘Fuck. Fuck. FUCKKKK ,’ I scream before tossing it on to the pavement.
A woman walking past with a little girl grabs the girl’s hand and scowls at me.
‘Sorry,’ I call after them.
I climb into the van and my phone buzzes to let me know I’ve got a message. I look at the time the message was left – 2.28 p.m. I mustn’t have had a signal in the train station. Maybe there’s a simple explanation, after all. Thank goodness I hadn’t already left – she’s probably on the next train.
I hit ‘play’. I listen to Sarah’s message. I hear the sound of her crying, and my body goes rigid as I listen to what she has to say.
Afterwards, I sit staring at the hordes of Christmas shoppers weaving in and out of the crowds on the pavement up ahead of me, eager to get to wherever it is they need to be.
But I have nowhere to be. Nowhere to go. So I stay, I stay sitting, silent and immobile, until it’s so cold in the van that my hands are numb and I can see my breath in front of me.
A long while later, I turn on the ignition. I start to drive, automatically retracing the route I took just a few hours ago, when the world looked bright and everything still felt possible. The same roads feel dark now. They are leading me nowhere.
The radio has been burbling away without me listening, but now there is a song I can’t ignore. ‘Stay Another Day,’ blasts through the speakers, taunting me. It’s the song Danny had been singing in the tent, the day Fridge died.
I pull over to the side of the road, bang my hands hard into the steering wheel, then I let my head fall forward and start to cry.
I cry for my sixth lost friend. I cry for everything he went through out there, and everything he went through when he came home. I cry for the future he was so desperate to make it back for but never got to see. I cry for the hurt he caused Sarah. And I cry with shame for the feelings I’ve let myself have for her.
It’s dark when I let myself back into the cottage, but I don’t turn the Christmas lights on. I don’t turn any lights on. And I don’t go mad, greeting the dogs enthusiastically, like I normally do. They all stare at me, a row of puzzled eyes.
I sit down at the kitchen table, and Elsa lays her head on my knee and sighs.
My phone pings. I take it out of my pocket and put it on silent. Then I open one of the bottles of red wine I bought to drink with Sarah. I take a tumbler from the draining board and fill it halfway. Then I pick the bottle up again and fill it to the top.
I down it in one. Then I pour myself another, and another, until the bottle is empty.
I stand up to get another bottle, but as I reach across the kitchen counter for it I catch sight of the soldier on the Christmas cake.
His eyes, in my drunken state, blur and then come sharply back into focus again. It’s as if he’s judging me, and I feel a sudden rush of pure rage, like on those days in Afghanistan when I learned my friends had died.
I judged myself then, for not being there for them, just like I haven’t been there for Danny. And now he’s gone too. I don’t want to listen to any of Sarah’s messages, because I know she’ll tell me Danny’s death had nothing to do with me.
But my heart, my conscience, every fibre of my being, tells me otherwise.
The icing-sugar soldier knows it. He knows how many people I’ve let down. He’s not here to protect my house from evil spirits. How can he, when the evil spirit is me?
I can’t stand it. I pick up the cake and hurl it at the wall.
For a moment it settles where it lands, glued to the wall, unmoving. Then I watch, grimly fascinated, as the soldier’s face falls apart.
‘Can’t stare at me now, can you?’ I mumble before pouring myself another glass.
I knock it back, then stare as the disfigured chunks of the nutcracker soldier’s face break loose and start to slither slowly down the wall, until finally it all comes away in one ugly piece and crashes to the floor.
I know how and where I’m going to do it. And it’s okay. I’m ready. Because even though I’m not sure that I want to be dead, I am sure that I don’t want to be alive.
If I’d never known what it was like to have the door opened, to be given a glimpse of another life, and to step inside, I might have been all right. I might have lived the rest of my life on the outskirts, as a spectator. Gone back to how it always was.
But Sarah opened the door, and I don’t know how to close it. I don’t know how to live the rest of my life without her. I don’t know how to live the rest of my life with all this guilt.
I never did call Sarah back. I can’t stand to hear how Danny died. It would be too painful. But he must have killed himself, like all those other poor bastards with PTSD. How can Sarah and I be together, knowing that? Building a future after the pain of his death.
And if she doesn’t hate me for that now, it’s only a matter of time before she does. Before she realizes what I’ve done. To Danny, to everyone. To all those people I’ve let down.
And when she does, those beautiful green eyes of hers will look at me differently. And I won’t be able to bear it.
No, this is for the best. The world will be a better place without me in it. Sarah will be better off without me. She may not see that now, but I know she will eventually. Freed from the baggage that we both carry, she’ll meet someone new. Someone good. Someone whose mind doesn’t take them to the dark places I’ve been. Someone who deserves her. Who can make her happy.
As for Danny, I failed him like I failed the others. I should have gone down to Wales to see him after Sarah told me how bad things were for him. Maybe if I had, he might still be here. I as good as left him on the battlefield.
My phone rings again. It’s Sarah. I don’t pick up. I don’t want to talk to her. Well, that’s not strictly true. I do want to talk to her. I really want to talk to her, to hear the sound of her voice. But I’m scared that if I do, I won’t be able to do this.
It rings one more time. My hand hovers over it. I imagine Sarah telling me that everything is okay. Telling me that she still loves me. But she’s not going to say that, is she? How can she?
Danny is dead.
I sit for a minute. Listen to the rain. Normally I like listening to the sound of the weather coming in from the moors while I’m cosy inside the cottage, but tonight it’s making me feel even more agitated than I already am, so I turn on the radio.
My head feels heavy. It’s as if it can’t stand the weight of all my thoughts struggling inside it. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t, because I know that when I do, I’ll see his face.
I hear him instead. I hear him in the lyrics of the song on the radio. Stereophonics, ‘Maybe Tomorrow’. A sorrowful male voice is singing about black clouds.
That’s what I am. A little black cloud. Stumbling around. Because everyone I love always ends up dying. It’s like an endless hall of mirrors, all their faces, great and small, staring back at me accusingly in the warped glass.
I can’t take that chance with Sarah.
That day with her, that amazing night, it really felt like the start of something. But I should have known that our happiness was borrowed, our romance doomed. That the idea of me and Sarah, front and centre, could never be allowed. I don’t deserve it, and I should never have let myself think that I did.
The darkness is here again. It’s descending inexorably, like a shutter being closed.
Is this how it felt for Danny?
I don’t know. But I soon will.
I must have dozed off, because it’s dark when I wake up. I let the dogs out and put the kettle on. Then I go upstairs and splash cold water on my face. I purposely don’t look at my reflection in the mirror. I don’t want to see myself.
Elsa has followed me upstairs; I can hear her tail thumping on the bathroom floor. I can’t bring myself to look at her face either. To see in her eyes the faith she still has in me, when I have none left in myself.
Back downstairs, I make myself a cup of coffee. There are three new messages from Sarah, but I don’t listen to them. I need to focus. There are things I need to do.
I take the pad and pen that Maggie left on the side to write down the names of the dogs we’re looking after, and their schedules. I sit down at the kitchen table and begin to write.
Dear Maggie,
I need to ask you to do something for me. It’s a big ask, I know, but I don’t trust anyone else.
Will you take care of the dogs? Elsa and Mungo and Mr Jones? Please don’t let anything bad happen to them. They’ve all been through enough already.
They deserve better than me. You all do.
For a while there I told myself I was a good guy. I thought I could start again. Try to live a good life. A simple life. A life that had good people in it, like you and your mum.
But I’m not a good guy. And I’m scared that if I hang around, then I’ll ruin things for all of you too. I don’t mean to. But that doesn’t matter, because I always stuff it up anyway.
My dad had the right idea. Walk away. Leave me to it.
The one decent thing I ever did was being a soldier. And it turns out I wasn’t even good at that. I can’t have been, because all the people I charged myself with taking care of are dead now.
I’m sorry, Maggie. You and your mum are two of the best things that have ever happened to me. You gave me a reason to be, and a reason to get better. It should have been enough. This – you, the dogs, the business. But I got greedy. I wanted more, so I told myself that what I wanted was okay.
But it wasn’t okay. And now I have to answer for that. And I’m okay with that. Really, I am.
Be good to your mum. She’s amazing. And your dad.
The truth is, you’re all better off without me.
I don’t have much, but what I do have is yours. You can use it for the business, or you can use it for yourself. I trust you and I want you to be happy. Live your best life, Maggie. Be the amazing person that I know you are going to be. That you already are.
Love,
Carl xxx
I carefully fold the letter in two, then I reach into the drawer of the kitchen table and pull out one of the envelopes Maggie uses to put the bills in. I stuff the letter inside and carefully write Maggie’s name on the front.
Then I take another piece of paper. ‘Dear Mum,’ I write at the top. But then, not knowing what to say, I get up and pour myself another glass of red wine. I knock it back in one.
I want to screw the piece of paper up and not bother, but then I think about something Sarah said after the wedding. She talked about how happy it had made her, giving her dad another chance.
It makes me want to do the same thing with Mum, to put things right between us. I was going to ring her on Christmas Day. Ask her to come and stay. Well, I won’t get that chance now, but I can at least tell her goodbye.
She deserves that much. She tried her best to be there for me. I see that now. She tried really hard when I stayed with her after I got back from Afghanistan. That’s when she told me that she’d spent time in care herself when she was a kid.
She wouldn’t tell me anything more; this is the woman who, after all, has spent a lifetime avoiding emotional issues. Whose mantra has always been, ‘Don’t go there, Carl, why open that can of worms?’
I understand now that it was just too painful for her. Whatever happened that led to her being in care. The guilt I know she felt at history repeating itself. At feeling like an utter failure when her own children were taken away from her. And I feel nothing but sympathy and love for her.
I wish I’d told her that. I should have done. But fresh back from Camp Bastion, I was in pieces. I was struggling to survive in my own shoes, let alone put myself in someone else’s.
And it was just so hard, seeing her drunk all the time with that no-good boyfriend of hers. Maybe if she hadn’t been, I would have tried to talk to her. Maybe if he hadn’t always been hanging around.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. That’s the theme of all my regrets, isn’t it? Of my life. Anyway, here goes.
Dear Mum,
This is the second letter like this I’ve had to write to you. You never got to read the first one, because I made it back from Afghanistan.
Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe it would have been easier for everyone if I’d been killed over there. You would have read that letter, been proud that I’d carried out my duty, and we could all have been done with it.
I wish you were here, instead of up in Scotland with your latest boyfriend. I’m not mad at you for going. I hope you’re happy. I hope he’s treating you right. I just miss you. I just wish I’d had more time with you. Had a chance to talk – tell you how much I love you, how hard I know things have been for you. But then I know how much you hate to talk!
I’m so tired, Mum. I’m so tired of trying – and what’s the point anyway? What’s the point, when all the time I’m doomed? When every time I try, I mess things up again.
The sadness and the shame are too much.
I’d sort of learned to live with the sadness. I’d told myself that I had the dogs and the business, and that I could move on. But then I let myself fall in love with someone, when I knew, in my heart, I shouldn’t. And now another person I used to care about is dead too.
I’ve let everyone down, Mum. All of them. Adam and Scott. You.
But mostly I’ve let myself down. The soldier I thought I was. Because the people I should have stood guard over, have all gone.
And each time I lose someone else, it gets harder to convince myself it wasn’t my fault. I don’t have it in me to fight any more. To run away from these feelings.
It’s time to face them head on. To just jump right in. It feels less scary, that way, because then the sadness is no longer creeping up behind me, waiting to wash over me.
Like the sea, that time in Scarborough. Do you remember the day trip we had there? The day you let me bunk off school, and that new boyfriend of yours drove us there in his Triumph sports car?
The roof was down. I can even remember what song was playing on the radio – ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’ by the Nolan Sisters.
You were singing along and waving your arms above your head, and I was shouting at you to stop, pretending to be embarrassed, but actually I just felt happy because you were happy. Don’t ask me why, but it feels important for you to know that now.
When we got there, we bought fish and chips, and ate them on the beach, and then you and I walked down to the water’s edge. It took forever – the tide was so far out! And when we got there the water was so cold, I screamed. I didn’t want it splashing over me so every time a wave came close, you lifted me out of the water.
Well, the thing is, that’s how it feels now. The waves are roaring up behind me. They are about to sweep me off my feet, but this time you can’t lift me out of the way. Even if you could, I wouldn’t want you to. This will be a release. An end to it all.
My mind feels so destroyed, I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense? But I think you know how that feels. I think you drank to escape it.
I know how hard things were for you. I see that now. You tried your best, Mum, you really did.
I’m not afraid. I want you to know that. I’ll be with my pals – where I should be. All together on the other side.
But I will miss you. I will miss what we could have been to each other, and I need you to know that I’m sorry for that.
It’s too hard to say anything else, so I’ll leave it there.
I love you, Mum. Thank you for trying.
Your Carl
xxx
I put Mum’s letter next to Maggie’s and then, in a third envelope, I put the photograph Barry took of my tattoo. This one I address to the journalist who helped me with Assami, and I write.
It was only ever supposed to be for me. The tattoo.
Each poppy is for one of the friends I lost in Afghanistan. I wanted to tell our story on my skin. Maybe you can tell that story now?
These are their names:
Fridge
Squadron
Tom
Caroline
Assami
I want the world to know who the poppies represent, and what happened to them. But, as always, the words fail me, so I head up to the spare bedroom and pull out the box marked ‘Afghanistan’ in black capital letters.
It is packed with newspaper cuttings, photographs, letters. Soon, their yellowing pages won’t mean anything to anyone. And that’s fine, when it comes to me – but not for the comrades I love. They deserve more. I want them to be remembered, if only for a little while.
I find the stories I’m looking for. Pictures of the hearses at Wootton Bassett that carried Fridge and Squadron and Tom’s coffins, covered with the Union Jack, back to base. Flowers strewn on their roofs, flung by crowds who never knew them but who turned out for those sad, final parades.
There’s a picture of Squadron’s mum, Lorraine, her hand resting on the glass window of the hearse. There’s a picture of Tom’s wife, her face crumpled with despair. There are pictures, too, of Fridge’s coffin and Caroline’s, accompanied by a long story of the friendly fire incident that led to her death.
I fold everything carefully and stuff it into the envelope. Then I write.
I am telling you all this, not to give myself any glory – I don’t deserve that, and I beg you not to credit me with any – but so that what they all gave, the sacrifices they made, might mean something.
So that their memories might be kept alive.
They were all such extraordinary people, they deserve that.
Best,
Carl
The last letter is the hardest of all to write.
Dear Sarah,
I wish I was better with words. I wish I was cleverer, so I could make you understand, but it’s too hard.
I need you to know that the only time in my whole life I ever truly saw myself was when you were looking at me. When you smiled at me. When you said my name.
With you everything was good, better than good, it was electric. The only time I ever felt special was when I was with you.
I’m so sorry, Sarah, for everything that’s happened. I never meant to cause you any pain, and I hate myself, knowing that I have. I’m doing this for you, so that I will never hurt you again. Never hurt anyone else again.
We didn’t have long, did we? Just a beginning, really. I wanted more. So much more. I wanted all of it. A home, a family, all my winters and summers growing old next to you.
But that wasn’t in the script for us. I knew that when I listened to your message – when I heard you cry over Danny. I never want to have to hear you cry again. I never want to be the person who makes you cry.
You were never meant for me, and I should never have let myself believe that you were. If I was a decent man, a decent soldier, I would have owned that from the beginning. Maybe then I could have helped Danny, my comrade and my friend, and he would still be here. And our future wouldn’t feel like one we had stolen from him.
You will meet someone so much better, and I hope more than anything that you will be happy. You deserve the best.
I had no right to love you. I see that now.
I’m sorry.
Yours, always,
Carl xxx
I put the star earrings in the envelope with her note and place it next to the others. Then I pick up the pills and the half-drunk bottle of whiskey, turn off the light, and go upstairs. I sit on the edge of my bed and empty the pills into my hand.
For a long time I stare at them. So long that they go clammy in my sweating palm.
My head feels heavy, overloaded.
Slowly, deliberately, I put the tablets on my tongue, then I close my lips tight around the cool glass of the bottle and take a large gulp. The pills swim in my mouth for a while, then I tilt my head back and swallow.
The liquid burns the back of my throat as it tries to flush the pills down, but there are too many and I start to choke. I take another glug of whiskey, then another, until I finish the bottle and the tablets are gone.
The back of my throat feels numb.
All of me feels numb.
I stare at the picture Sarge took of us all together. Me, Fridge, Squadron, Sarah, Danny, Jenni, Cherub, Jobbo, Caroline and Assami.
I don’t recognize the person squinting through the Afghan dust clouds, surrounded by all his mates. Back then, everything still seemed possible.
I take one last look at Sarah’s face.
Then I undo my army dog tags from around my neck and turn them over in my hand, like I used to do in my bunk, back in camp.
I don’t deserve to wear them any more.
I lie down. I can’t breathe. My mouth is dry, and my tongue feels thick. But my brain, which these last two days has felt as if it’s spinning out of control in my skull, whirring and gyrating and tormenting me, is quiet.
Sensing victory, it has started to slow down.
It’s time.
I close my eyes. Sarah’s face swims before me as if in a dream. I wish I could touch her one more time, hold her hair in my fingers, feel her skin next to mine.
I think of waking up with her beside me, the night after Jenni and Cherub got married. I’ve never woken up next to another woman in all my life. But with Sarah I always wanted to go all in.
I would have loved her forever, until we were old and grey. I would have done anything for her.
Elsa jumps up on to the bed beside me and lies down. She reaches her chin up to rest on my stomach, and I wrap my arm around her and close my eyes again. There’s a strange sensation at the back of my head. I feel myself falling. The lamp by my bed is on but I’m already in darkness. A black lid is closing over me.
I feel curiously peaceful. The guilt that has had its hands around my neck my whole life is loosening.
Guilt for not being enough to make Dad want to stick around.
For not being able to take care of my brothers.
For not being able to stop Mum’s drinking.
For Fridge and Squadron and Tom and Caroline.
For Sarah being injured.
And now for Danny.
It’s as if I’ve swum against the tide always, but now? Now I can just let myself sink into the warm waters. I let the sensation rush over me. I won’t fight it any more.
I’m so tired.
I feel the dog tags in my hand and rub my thumb backwards and forwards over the inscriptions on the discs.
Blood type: O negative
Service number: 662582
Religion: Roman Catholic
Name: Wilson, C.
In the end, that’s it.
That’s all there is.