Osama (14 page)

She wasn’t one for make-up. Her clear, delicately freckled skin had a beautiful, natural glow to it. Today, though, Joe noticed she was wearing lip gloss and mascara. She had on slim jeans and a halterneck top that clung slightly to her small breasts – the kind of clothes she normally wore on a night out, not at ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning. Some of the lads used to tell Joe that she looked like something out of the Corrs; no doubt they said other things behind his back.

‘Hi,’ he replied.

Caitlin stepped back so he could cross the threshold. Only when he had shut the door behind him did she wrap her arms around his neck and give him a brief, awkward hug, before standing back again and brushing her fingertips against the wall. ‘I redecorated,’ she said.

Joe blinked. The walls were powder blue, though what colour they’d been before, he had no idea. ‘Right,’ he replied.

‘Conor’s in his room. I said he didn’t have to go to school . . .’

Joe glanced up the stairs. His boy was only nine years old. Or was it ten? He realized, in a moment of guilt, that he’d had a birthday in April that Joe hadn’t even acknowledged. Conor was a good kid, at least that’s what his teachers said. Privately, Joe wished he would spend a little less time with his nose in a book, or at a screen playing games. When Joe was Conor’s age, he’d spent every spare hour out of doors, getting muddy, playing imaginary versions of the war games that would become his life. Conor just didn’t seem interested in stuff like that.

‘He’s been looking forward to seeing you,’ Caitlin said.

Joe dropped his bag on the hallway floor. When he looked at Caitlin again, he saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

Caitlin wiped the tears from her eyes. She looked angry with herself for crying. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Christ, Caitlin, it’s been a long couple of—’

‘Two months,’ she interrupted, her voice cracking. ‘Two months, Joe.’

‘Since what?’

‘Since I
heard
from you.’

Silence.

‘Right.’

‘Conor’s been asking every day when he’s going to see his dad. When he didn’t get a birthday letter from you, he asked me if you were . . .’ The tears had reappeared; she wiped them away again, this time smearing mascara over her stricken face. ‘Sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I wasn’t going to . . .’

‘I’m going to get cleaned up,’ Joe said. He pushed past her, but then felt her hand grab his wrist.

‘I’ve missed you so much, Joe,’ she whispered. ‘We both have.’ She hugged him again, this time resting her head against his chest. Joe breathed in her perfume and allowed the warmth from her body to saturate his. In his six months away he had forgotten how good it felt.

‘I really need to wash,’ he said. Caitlin separated herself from him and squeezed his hand. He headed up the stairs.

Conor’s room was at the top of the staircase on the right. The door, which had a tattered Spider-Man poster pinned to it, was closed. Joe put his ear to it and heard the beeping of his son’s DS. He tried to force his face into a look of pleasure. It didn’t come naturally. He was about to put his hand to the doorknob when he sensed that he was being watched. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Caitlin at the bottom of the stairs, staring up with swollen eyes. Joe lowered his hand, turned away and walked across the tiny landing into the double bedroom.

Thick carpet. Flowery curtains. Neat bedspread. It couldn’t have been more different from the Portakabin he’d been sharing with Ricky and JJ in Bagram, and Joe didn’t even feel he belonged in this room. Like he dirtied it. He immediately returned to the landing, and from there went into the bathroom. He stripped naked, dumping his clothes on the ceramic tiles. Caitlin had laid out wash things for him: toothbrush, razor, shaving gel. She was a lot less keen on his beard than the ruperts were. Joe didn’t bother with the gel. He started hacking at his matted beard with the razor. Clumps of hair fell into the apricot-coloured basin; the blade became dull after about fifteen swipes. He changed it, and continued to swipe at his face until he felt the blunt steel against his skin.

It took five minutes and three changes of blade to remove the beard. By the time he’d thrown the razor into the hair-filled basin, his face was bleeding in several places. Joe didn’t care. He stepped over the edge of the bath, pulled the opaque, floral shower curtain closed and turned on the water, maximum temperature. It was scalding, but Joe didn’t flinch as he held his face up to the shower head and allowed it to burn and soak him. He didn’t move for a minute. When he finally looked down, he saw that he was standing in an inch of dirty water, and still his skin wasn’t clean. He checked the thermostat, wanting to turn the heat higher. When a sharp twist confirmed that the water was as hot as it could be, he slammed his fist in anger against the wall tiles next to him. How the hell could he wash off six months of shit and death without . . .

Now the water was freezing. His eyes were closed. He opened them to see that he was sitting in the bath, the shower pouring from a height over his head. The water that had collected in the bath was clean now, save for a layer of gritty silt sitting along the enamel. He had no memory of how he’d got down here, or how long he had been sitting.

But it wasn’t that which scared him the most. What scared him were the shadows behind the shower curtain.

Two people. One standing further back than the other.

Joe slowed down his breathing to stop the panic rising in his chest, and moved his right hand to where the shower curtain was stuck to the inside of the bath. He carefully scrunched it in his palm and, with a sudden yank, ripped down the whole curtain, jumping to his feet at the same time.

A scream. Caitlin had her hand to her mouth, and little Conor, his russet hair scruffy and his face pale, edged backwards in alarm. Joe stared at them, naked and confused, as Caitlin ushered their son out of the bathroom before turning off the shower.

Silence. Joe looked around the room, but couldn’t bring himself to catch Caitlin’s eye.

‘You’ve been in here over an hour, honey,’ she said. Her voice was full of concern.

Joe looked down at his naked body, at the scars on his chest and the blisters on his feet. ‘I was dirty.’

Caitlin looked like she wanted to say something else but was too nervous to do so. Joe stepped out of the bath. There was a white towel hanging on the back of the door. He wrapped it round his waist and walked into their bedroom, where he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the striped wallpaper, and at a small picture Conor had drawn about a year ago, mounted in a cheap glass frame. It was a childishly drawn picture of Joe, dressed in what Conor called his ‘army clothes’ and wearing a Tommy Atkins hat with a strap under the chin that made him look like something out of the First World War. Not a laser marker or a flashbang in sight.

After waiting outside for a minute or so, Caitlin entered the room. She stood with her back to the closed door, as if wary of intruding.

‘Why did you pull the shower curtain off like that?’ she asked.

Joe sniffed. ‘I thought you were . . .’

‘What?’

Yeah, Joe thought to himself. What? ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Come on, honey, what did you . . . ’

‘Leave it, all right?’

Silence.

‘I heard about Ricky,’ she said.

No surprise there. Nothing travelled faster than gossip among the Regiment wives and girlfriends. Caitlin sounded frail as she said it. She’d been fond of Ricky. He used to tease her, and her face would light up every time he did it.

‘I was with him.’

Immediately she was by his side, one arm around his shoulders.

‘How did it happen?’ she whispered.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I just . . .’

‘Look, forget it. He’s not fucking here. He died. Just like every other fucker that goes out there.’

Silence. Caitlin kept her arm around his shoulder for a few more seconds, then awkwardly withdrew it. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

Joe nodded.

‘I spoke to your adjutant,’ Caitlin whispered. ‘He said you were . . . he said maybe . . . they were sending a doctor to talk to you . . . this afternoon . . .’

‘Tell them not to bother.’ Ricky was the one who’d needed a fucking doctor.

‘But Joe, if something’s wrong . . .’

She raised her hand to his face and gently forced him to look at her. All he saw were mascara-smudged eyes.

‘I’m sorry I gave you a hard time, Joe. I’m
so
sorry. I just—’

‘I need to sleep,’ Joe interrupted. He stood up suddenly, walked around the bed and closed the curtains. They had thick blackout linings, and blocked most of the light from the room.

‘I’ll leave you then,’ Caitlin said, standing up.

‘Right,’ said Joe.

He knew he was being a bastard, but somehow he couldn’t stop it. And by the time he was under the duvet, she had left the room.

It was a sleep of sorts, but troubled, broken and disturbed by dreams that were both vivid and sickening. Joe saw himself in Abbottabad. From his hiding place under the rubble, he watched first one body bag emerge from the house, and then the second. They were halfway across the courtyard when the first bag mysteriously split open. A body sat up: a thin man with a grey beard, wearing a bloodstained smock. He had a gruesome gun wound to the head that had turned one eye socket into a crater of bloody pap. But the good eye was blinking and looking directly at Joe. The mouth was moving. Joe couldn’t understand the sinister Arabic intonation. He didn’t
want
to understand it. He tried to block his ears, but it only made the noise louder. He felt for his pistol. The only way to stop it was to shoot the bastard again. Joe steadied his shaking hand and took aim . . . he was ready to fire . . .

Only he wasn’t looking at a corpse any more. He was looking at Ricky, sitting up from the body bag and giving Joe a perplexed look.

And then he was sitting up in bed, sweating, trembling. The bedside clock showed 11.58.

Joe swore at himself, before lying down again and closing his eyes, determined to rest.

But his dreams took him somewhere else. He was on all fours, pressed against the dusty desert earth with the sun beating down on his back. He heard a child’s voice: ‘Amer-ee-can motherfucker . . . Amer-ee-can motherfucker . . .’ He looked over his shoulder to see who was speaking. It wasn’t a kid. It was the same figure from his previous dream, with the same crater-like wound in his eye socket.

And then another explosion.

And another . . .

And another . . .

Joe was back in his bedroom at home. 13.02. The sheets were soaked. His breath came in short gasps. But the explosions – they weren’t in his head any more. They were real.

He jumped out of bed. A pair of jeans and a fresh shirt had been laid out for him while he slept. He pulled on the jeans as the explosions continued. He stormed out of the bedroom and onto the landing. Gunfire, short bursts from an automatic weapon. And it was coming from the direction of his son’s bedroom.

Joe didn’t hesitate. He burst through the door, which swung on its hinges and bashed against the wall.

Conor’s room hadn’t changed since he’d been away. The cabin bed was still neatly made; the encyclopedias he loved were lined up on his bookcase. Conor himself was sitting on a spotty beanbag in the middle of the room. He was facing a small television, with an Xbox controller in his hand. Joe looked to the screen. His son was playing one of the war games that were so popular with the younger men back in the Stan. From the point of view of a player with an assault rifle, Joe could see a realistic desert landscape, with an animated Chinook hovering in the distance. Two Taliban fighters, their heads wrapped in keffiyehs, approached. Conor was ignoring the game now, looking up at his father with frightened eyes. The animated Taliban drew knives. Now they were at the front of the screen. An instant later there was the sickening sound of metal puncturing flesh and a rattling death groan from the device.

Joe felt an unstoppable rage. He stepped into the centre of the room, grabbed the controller from Conor’s tiny hands and yanked the cords that connected them to the console. The Xbox flew forward, but the game played on. The virtual soldier was on the ground, virtual blood spilling onto the virtual sand. Joe stormed up to the TV and before he knew it he had yanked the screen off its little stand and sent it crashing to the ground.

At last there was silence.

Joe looked down at the smashed television, and then at Conor, whose lip was wobbling as he tried to hold back his tears. He tried to think of something to say. But he couldn’t. The explosions and gunfire were still in his head, like distant echoes, distracting his attention.

Footsteps up the stairs. Caitlin appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene with a single glance. She had swapped the halterneck for an altogether less glamorous black T-shirt. The three of them remained very still, in a triangle of silence, Conor and Caitlin staring at Joe like he was a stranger.

Ten seconds passed before Joe stormed out of the room, pushing past Caitlin and heading downstairs. ‘He shouldn’t be playing that shit all day anyway,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t he play fucking football?’