Poppy Day (13 page)

Dorothea shook her head, her bottom lip protruding, arms folded tightly across her chest. She was clearly miffed by the brevity of her granddaughter’s visit. She reminded Poppy of an overgrown toddler. Poppy bent forward and kissed her
forehead
. ‘Goodnight, Nan. Sweet dreams.’

Her nan’s voice boomed against her back, urgent and
deliberate
, ‘Simon. His name was Simon.’

Simon. Simon. It didn’t matter how many times Poppy repeated the name in her head; it didn’t help to make him into a person, a brother that she could picture. She tried to calculate the year of his birth, how old would Cheryl have been …
fourteen
, fifteen? It was with a mixture of excitement and suspicion that she contemplated her nan’s revelation. It might be true; she could have a sibling named Simon, a big brother that could help her find Martin, offer support with Dorothea. On the other hand, he could be a complete tosser if his dad was one of the blokes her mum had always managed to attach herself to. They were a particular type, with perma-tans and a fondness for chunky gold. They were usually called Terry or Trevor and were interchangeable, always rough and reckoned they were a bit of a hit with the ladies. These tracksuit-wearing Terry/Trevor hybrids would call Poppy ‘Sweedart’, be on a first-name basis with both the local bookie and pub landlord, drive old, slow, dented Fords and had never read a book or paid income tax in their lives.

A picture swam into her mind of a boy at school, two years above her and Martin. His name was Simon, his hair was darker than hers, but the freckles were similar. She shook her head. ‘Get a grip, Pop.’ She had enough to think about without throwing her mysterious, potentially non-existent brother into the mix.

I
NCARCERATION THREW UP
unexpected challenges for Martin. He learnt to live with discomfort, the acute fear he had felt upon capture subsided and his humiliation diluted with the passing of time. Incredibly, it was the interminable boredom and isolation that proved to be the biggest threats to his sanity.

Night and day were indistinguishable. Without any concept of time, every hour was the same. He existed in a purgatorial cycle, lying in a rat-infested square with no idea when the next punishment was going to be delivered.  

He slept as much as he could and relished the escape it offered. He would often dream that he was at home and could feel the soft pillow cradling his head, could sense the slow rhythm of Poppy’s chest as it rose and fell, could hear the milkman rattling bottles at some ungodly hour in the morning. When he woke, for the first split-second of consciousness, he wouldn’t know which was dream and which the reality.  

In his darker moments, despair gave way to anger. Frustration would bubble away until a guttural shout of ‘Bastards!’ would leap from his throat, a small protest against his incarceration. It served to remind his jailors that he was human, a man who had a life and a future, before they replaced his optimism with fear. It angered him that this predicament had not happened by chance, but by design; someone had chosen to take his freedom.  

It was a strange dichotomy. Martin had never experienced such isolation, yet was never alone, not for any discernible length of time. It nearly sent him mad; the constant scrutiny of at least one pair of eyes. Unspeaking, silent eyes set in different faces, yet all betraying the same hatred, the same fervour. The level of supervision amused him. What did they think he was going to do? Nibble his way through the brickwork? Even if he had been able to reach the window, he had no hope of
removing
the planks and even less chance of surviving alone outside of these four walls. To put it in terms that his army buddies would understand, he was up shit creek…

There was the odd second during the ‘changing of the guard’ as Martin called it, when he would be alone and those odd seconds were to be relished. He could still hear the men outside, the mutterings of handover, the slap of leather-soled sandals against the floor and the click of metal gun against walls, but he was out of sight and that meant privacy of sorts. Not that Martin needed physical privacy; his body wasn’t responsive or functioning in any normal way. This fact alone made him feel sad, emphasising just how broken he was.

These precious seconds gave him the chance to think about Poppy in peace, without the grunting and breathing of some hairy bloke in the corner, cleaning his gun or praying. He would talk to her out loud and not just in his head, ‘Hang in there, baby. I miss you, but I’m always with you. Be strong for me, my beautiful Poppy. I love you so much.’

A couple of the guards were peasants, rough looking and poorly dressed. They were the worst. Taunting Martin,
shouting
at him in a language he had no hope of understanding, punching him, or worse, if they got the chance. They found it amusing when he wet himself, but he had no choice, he was often tied up and couldn’t move. The combination of ammonia on raw skin and the intense heat meant his legs were quickly covered in sores. It was horrific for him, the stench unbearable and it was his own smell. He could only imagine how bad it must have been for someone else.

A new guard arrived after a few days, laughing loudly as he entered the room. Martin turned his head towards the door, his heart racing; this ebullient display was unusual and unnerving. The guard walked over to where he lay, peering into his face. He was a lad in his late teens, with good white teeth and a ready smile.

‘Manchester United!’ He over-pronounced the ‘r’, turning into a roll, a long almost French sound.

Martin nodded.

His guard continued, ‘David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney!’

In spite of the absolutely dire circumstances, Martin laughed, ‘Yes, Manchester United!’ Although as a Spurs fan it nearly choked him. Martin bloody hated Manchester United.

The lad laughed and patted Martin’s shoulder. His touch, this one small display of empathy when he was used to being prodded like a dog, caused a lump to rise in his throat. He
swallowed
and sniffed to abate the tears. It was also the first time since his capture that anyone had said anything he could
understand
. It sounded like poetry, his language from his country, his beautiful England.

Whether coincidence or not, with the arrival of ‘Man U’ as Martin called him, his life seemed to get a little better. The morning he was told to take his clothes off was a significant milestone. Martin was petrified. After stripping, his uniform was bundled up and taken out of the room. Another guard came in, holding a large, metal bucket of tepid water. There was a small, dirty rag floating on the top of it. Martin didn’t notice the rust on the receptacle or the holes in the wash cloth; to him, it was the luxury bathroom of a fancy hotel.

It was wonderful for him to feel water on his skin, to run it over his legs, down his back. When he’d finished, he was given a traditional Afghan outfit of long pyjama-style trousers and a cotton caftan with slits up the sides. Martin was grateful to have fresh clothes, even more so to be clean. He was allowed to keep the bucket to use as a loo and that alone made his life bearable.

It was a strange thing that happened to Martin in captivity. He quickly became dehumanised by the humiliation, the squalor. Then, when things picked up slightly, got a little bit better – like being given a dirty bucket to go to the loo in, or the fact that he could lift up his hands, which were untied, to touch his own face – these small things became huge; they meant everything. The cotton fabric of his new clothes made it much easier to live in the intense heat.

With the removal of his uniform and the growth of his beard, Martin’s treatment changed. He concluded that his desert combats were a constant and fresh reminder of what he represented. Without them, he blended in, noticing that abuse from a couple of the guards stopped. His beard was a symbol that his Muslim captors welcomed, although for Martin it was a daily reminder of a shave that wouldn’t happen, a day that he couldn’t strike off in his quest to get back to Poppy. Whether the guards had been told to stop his ill treatment or because they were more used to him, confident that he wasn’t going to try and escape, didn’t matter. Either way, it was a welcome development. He was given greater freedom, able to sit or lie on the bed, and it was wonderful to have the choice. For this too, he was thankful.

Escape had been playing on Martin’s mind. The many and varied methods of his sprint to freedom had been imagined and dismissed. Too many unknowns blighted every idea. He knew his best opportunity to get away had been at the point of capture. What had he been taught? To use the confusion, the panic, create a diversion, make a noise and fight back. He
mentally
flipped through the training manual, trying to locate the page that detailed what to do when holed up in a darkened room under the constant scrutiny of an armed fanatic. Despite the dire odds of success, he was still determined to try.

A bout of diarrhoea had left him in a weakened state. His skin bore the filmy sheen of a fevered sweat. He lay on the
mattress
, straining to hear any activity outside the room. It was one of those rare minutes when the guards were changing and he was alone. He had decided that this would be the moment, a small window that would prove the best chance of escape. He swung unsteady legs around until he was in a sitting position. A fresh cramp tore at his stomach as his bowels spasmed –
fortunately
they were empty. Swaying and upright, he stepped forward with his hand outstretched; the door handle was now only inches from his grasp.

It was simultaneous; as he placed his trembling palm against the frame for support, the person on the other side turned the handle. Both started, neither expecting to come face to face with the enemy. Whether it was good luck or bad it’s hard to decide, a different captor might have not been so keen to arrive and could have given him a few more precious minutes in which to escape. Similarly, he may have drawn a weapon and put his charge out of his misery.

It was the startled face of Man U that mirrored his own. The young Afghan glanced nervously over his shoulder before entering the room; had there been other witnesses, the matter would have been taken out of his hands. Martin wobbled, threatening to fall. Man U took him by the elbow and guided him back to the bed. He sat his charge down and crouched in front of him, like a tired parent addressing a taxing child. His manner was calm, his tone inflected with kindness. He shook his head while holding Martin’s gaze. It was an impasse. Man U delivered his words slowly, gone were his trademark
exuberance
and grin. He drew his index finger across his throat with great deliberation. ‘Georgie Best.’

Martin received the message loud and clear. He nodded, strangely touched by Man U’s stance. It wasn’t characteristic of the oppressor, but was more in the nature of protection and friendship. Martin considered it a lucky thing that Man U had been his interceptor. God forbid he had been meted out a dose of Georgie Best…

In Martin’s darker moments he would think about Aaron. He tried to wipe the images from his mind but couldn’t. In the same way the tip of a tongue seeks out a decaying tooth, so he would mentally jab at his pain, replaying his friend’s final moments in slow-motion detail. It would make him feel sick, angry and, shamefully, a little bit relieved. They had killed Aaron and spared him, but it could so easily have been the other way around. While he was alive there was hope, no matter how small, that he would get to see Poppy again. He wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms, hear her wonderful voice and to tell her that he loved her. No matter how bad his circumstances, that glimmer of hope was the most precious thing and he clung to it.

Even the thought made him feel guilty. What wouldn’t Aaron have given to hold his missus one more time, to see his little boy, mark one more birthday, celebrate one more Christmas, enjoy one more walk in the park, read one more bedtime story?

Martin’s wish, no, his prayer during those dark times was that his friend’s body had been repatriated and that he had been given the burial he deserved. Martin couldn’t bear the idea that Aaron’s body had been left somewhere, taken or still missing. He took comfort from the image of the soldier’s coffin,
flag-draped
and saluted, back home where he belonged in the country that he loved.

Martin woke with a start in the middle of the night. He had dreamt that he was woken by Poppy. He could tell it was his wife by her touch and smell. She was stroking the hair away from his forehead. Her voice a gentle whisper, ‘Mart… Mart… It’s OK, baby, I’m here.’ Her words and the touch of her fingers against his skin gave him a jolt of elation. It felt real. He could sense her. It made him miss her so much, he wanted to cry. Martin didn’t want to open his eyes because he knew that he would lose her all over again. Clamping his lids, he tried to keep on dreaming, tried to remain focused, to keep her with him.

When he woke and sat up on the dirty mattress, in his grim prison, it felt even more like hell because he had remembered that there was a better place, a place that he wanted to be, with the woman that he loved. It was at times like these that he missed her the most.

He drifted back into a light sleep, with the memory of her voice and the sound of her laugh playing in his head. It was beautiful and painful all at the same time.

Martin’s quiet reflection inspired him. He woke with the new idea that maybe he wasn’t the only person that had been taken captive; perhaps someone else was being held in the same building. As the suggestion grew, so did the possibility of who else they had taken. Not only could there be someone else like him, held in another room, but it might even be someone that he knew, someone from the same patrol or at the very least another soldier.

The prospect of this was wonderful, giving him a strong feeling of hope and excitement. Martin decided to ask Man U the next time he saw him. He wasn’t sure how he was going to make him understand, but he was determined to try. He had purposely avoided making conversation or trying to engage with the guards, figuring out quite quickly that if he was invisible, it made life easier for everyone. Those that didn’t want to guard him weren’t reminded of his presence, and those that felt hostile he didn’t antagonise. His childhood had given him all the training he needed for this; don’t breathe too loudly and don’t be obvious. Quietly disappear.

Man U walked in the very next day with his arms held aloft as though he had just scored a goal. His smile fixed. He stepped closer to the bed before announcing, ‘Manchester United!’

‘Yes! Yes! Manchester United!’

Martin knew what was coming next. ‘David Beckham!’

‘Yes!’ Again he nodded, ‘David Beckham!’

The whole charade was a whole lot easier than you might imagine. It wasn’t too different from dealing with Dorothea, although Martin never visited her without Poppy, finding their interactions when he was alone, if not frustrating, then
certainly
embarrassing.

They exhausted the few common words that they shared when Martin decided to take the bull by the horns. He pointed at his chest in a Tarzanesque manner. ‘Me, David Beckham.’

Whether he understood or not, Man U laughed and nodded, repeating the words, ‘David Beckham!’

Martin then pointed towards the door, trying to indicate the wider building. ‘Ryan Giggs? Wayne Rooney? Other David Beckham?’ He tried to make his tone sound as much like a question as he could.

The guard nodded. ‘Manchester United!’

Martin tried again, pointing at his own chest, ‘Me David Beckham, soldier.’ Martin then pointed at his captor, ‘You Ryan Giggs.’