Soldier's Daughters (28 page)

As the plane slowed and began to turn Immi gazed across the aisle and out of a porthole, and thought that what she could see looked like what she’d seen on arrival at almost any other airport she’d ever landed at. A big complex of terminal buildings, a bunch of aircraft sitting on their stands and some moth-eaten grass – except this moth-eaten grass was rather browner and dustier than the stuff they’d left behind at Brize. So this was what Africa looked like.

And when she got off the aircraft she discovered what Africa felt like – nice and warm – well, nice and warm compared to the UK. And they were high here. She’d been told it was about six thousand feet so wasn’t it like Ben Nevis? Which might explain why it wasn’t completely baking even though they were almost smack on the equator. But it smelt of aviation fuel and warm concrete like any other airport. She pitied the lads who were on baggage detail unloading the plane; being this high it was going to be tiring. Obviously with all the guns and ammo on board there was no way the local baggage handlers could be allowed to do it so the soldiers were forming human chains and hauling everything into the eighteen-tonners that had been driven onto the pan where the huge RAF plane was parked. All being well, everything would catch up with them at their first stop – the British Army Training Unit, Kenya or BATUK as it was referred to in the endless movement orders Immi had processed only a few weeks earlier.

Immi shuffled forward with the rest of the soldiers, who were not unloading the aircraft’s hold, to pass through Kenyan immigration and then into a separate holding area in the main terminal till the movement officer led them to the coaches that had pulled up outside.

Immi wasn’t sure what she had imagined Nairobi would look like but, if she was honest, it was a bit of a disappointment. Actually, it was a massive disappointment. She hadn’t expected to see mud huts and grass skirts but she had expected something more, well, African. For a start the roads were a joke; they seemed to be one continuous pothole. She supposed the roads might have been really dangerous if they’d managed to travel at any speed but the driver was barely managing to get out of second gear; the traffic was mad. And it was worse than mad, it was psychotically, suicidally mad, with little minibus taxis mounting the pavements to get round the jams, motorcycles going the wrong way up one-way streets, thousands of pedestrians jay-walking or stepping off pavements in front of moving vehicles, and everyone seemed to think that traffic lights and stops signs were advisory rather than mandatory. And then there was the rubbish: piles and piles of it heaped up at the side of the road, along the pavements, dumped on street corners with people in rags picking over the rotting, stinking detritus. Immi felt her skin crawl at the sight. Fancy having to do that? How desperate did you have to be to want to rummage through that sort of shit? she wondered.

The bus carried on its stop-start way around the outskirts of the city while Immi stared open-mouthed at the crazy driving and the sights of Nairobi until after an hour or so they reached their destination, the barracks where they would get their briefing about what to expect in Africa and where they would spend the night before being taken upcountry to Nanyuki, where they would start getting everything ready for the arrival of the rest of the battle group and also get acclimatised to the sun.

The convoy of buses drew to a halt and everyone got off. They were led to a hall where bottles of water were handed out before everyone took their seats for the briefing. They’d been on the go for hours, what with the journey to the RAF base, then the endless wait, then the nine-hour flight… All Immi wanted was to eat and hit the hay but now she had to listen to the training major as he droned on about standard operating procedures, casevac arrangements, the dangers of heatstroke, dehydration, insect bites, septicaemia, malaria…

And here was me thinking I might get a bit of a suntan, thought Immi. I’m not venturing outside ever, if that’s what can happen to you.

‘Moving on…’ said the training major.

Oh Lordy, thought Immi. More? How much more was there to say? And it wasn’t as if any of it would apply to her, seeing how she wasn’t going to do anything but walk from her accommodation to her office and then back again at the end of the day. She wasn’t going to be out in the bundu, she wasn’t going to be lugging her body weight in kit around and she wasn’t going to be sleeping rough surrounded by bugs and snakes. What the heck of what he was banging on about was going to apply to her? She struggled to pay attention. One of the things she’d learned about being in a huge minority, when lecturers wanted to pick on someone to answer a question, they always picked on an easy target. And being one of four women in a roomful of men meant that the odds were stacked against her if this officer decided to fire a few questions at the audience. She tried not to think about how much she wanted a hot shower, a decent meal and a sleep…

‘You there, the blonde…’

Immi was jerked awake by his voice and a nudge in the ribs from the bloke next to her.

Fuck – she was right. The major was staring directly at her.

‘What’s one of the biggest hazards on the ranges?’

She was about to say lions as a wild guess, when her neighbour whispered, ‘Civilian incursion.’

Really? OK. ‘Civilian incursion,’ she repeated.

The training major narrowed his eyes but Immi stared brazenly back at him.

‘Thanks mate,’ she whispered to her saviour, when the major moved on to cover the hazards of attacks from ivory poachers who had a particular liking for night-vision goggles – for fairly obvious reasons.

‘No worries,’ he whispered back. ‘Besides, you don’t look like someone who’s going to be yomping around the bush.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Immi with feeling. And anyway, if she was out in the bush she’d be in a vehicle with the journo she was going to be looking after and she didn’t think this media type would want to risk his skin either. Didn’t reporters want to sit in bars, drink epic amounts of Scotch, smoke endless fags and chat up pretty girls to get the low-down on a scoop – or was that just ones in films?

Maddy was being a dreadful slob, she knew: nearly eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning and she still hadn’t got either Nathan or herself dressed. But who cared? She had no plans, they weren’t going anywhere, all they were going to be doing that day was playing and loafing about so what did it matter if they didn’t get out of their pyjamas? Of course, if Seb knew he’d be horrified. His sense of military discipline and order would be affronted, but when the cat’s away… She felt a little disloyal, even entertaining the thought, but really, life was sometimes a lot simpler without Seb around.

Nathan was happily employed stacking bricks in the sitting room so Maddy went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. As she filled the kettle at the sink she looked out of the window and saw a strange car parked outside.

Her heart stilled. With ghastly certainty she knew who it was. What did she want? Though Maddy could guess, especially after those texts. She couldn’t face a confrontation.

She ducked out of sight and then nipped back into the sitting room, scooped up Nathan and whipped him upstairs as the doorbell rang. She’d pretend she was out. She wouldn’t answer the door.

The doorbell rang again and again and then incessantly for about thirty seconds, followed by fairly violent hammering on the door. She sat on the bed in her room, clutching Nathan to her and wondering if she ought to call the police. And then the hammering and ringing stopped. It was some time before Maddy crept back to the front and looked out.

The car had gone. She felt shaky with relief.

A couple of hours later she received another text.

Hes mine not yours and I will have him. You wont stop me.

For the rest of the morning Maddy paced about her house, unable to settle, sick with worry about her visitor and the text message. Every now and again Maddy would be distracted by Nathan or a household task that needed doing and forget to be frightened, but then she would remember the manic ringing of the doorbell and the adrenalin would kick in again, leaving her panicky and terrified. She made her mind up. If Michelle came back she’d definitely call 999. She didn’t care if the cops thought she was a drama queen or a nutter with a hyper-active imagination – better that than risk anything happening to Nate.

What she really wanted was someone to talk to, someone who could reassure her, but who? Susie and Mike were taking their girls back to boarding school, and because of the extended leave period hardly any of her neighbours were back from holidays with friends and relatives. Besides, thought Maddy, she could hardly go around the patch sounding off about her marital problems to all and sundry.

It was her own fault. She should have asked Seb about the texts the instant she’d received them, she should have raced back to the house and asked him what the hell was going on. And now it was too late, now he was in the middle of sodding Africa and God only knew when she’d be able to get hold of him. What a mess.

The drive from the camp outside Nairobi to Nanyuki had been, thought Sam, a bit of a disappointment. She’d hoped for a sort of mini-safari; stunning countryside, maybe a glimpse of the odd giraffe or elephant, but instead, once they’d left the chaotic sprawl of the city they’d driven along roads lined by ramshackle villages and the only animals they’d seen had been the domestic variety – cows, sheep, goats, and dozens and dozens of donkeys all pulling carts laden with anything and everything you could think of. Where, wondered Sam, were the rolling grasslands with solitary acacia trees like you saw in wildlife films made about Africa? Where were the herds of wildebeest? Even a termite mound would be a welcome sight! Instead, it was either fields of wheat or acres of glasshouses growing flowers. Frankly, thought Sam, it seemed more like the Cotswolds than Kenya. Now and again her heart lifted when she saw a woman dressed in colourful, tribal costume with an amazing headdress of towering, sculpted fabric, or some flash of blue or green as a tropical bird zipped across the path of their coach, but mostly the journey was plain tedious.

Eventually they drove into the town of Nanyuki, the closest settlement to the Laikipia base which would be home for a while, past a sign that told them they were right on the equator; ahead Sam could see a huge looming mountain that dominated the horizon – Mount Kenya. Finally, she felt she was in Africa.

Surprisingly, despite being on the equator, when they got off the bus it wasn’t the red-hot heat that Sam had been expecting. Duh, of course, they were thousands of miles high. Well, thousands of feet, at any rate. This was a pleasant turn-up for the books, she thought. Except, of course, the chances of getting really badly sunburnt were much higher; with pleasant UK summer temperatures as the norm it was going to be hard to keep remembering to slap on the factor fifty several times a day.

She looked about her. So this was going to be home sweet home for the next few weeks and it was hardly going to be luxury living. The accommodation was better than a tent, she supposed, but only marginally. Of course, like the rest of the battle group, she’d be going down, off the plateau and into the training area, but a base would be maintained back here for really serious vehicle repairs. Until the exercise proper got under way Sam had no way to judge how often she’d be required to oversee REME operations in the training area and how much she’d be needed here.

Now the buses had all arrived the senior NCOs organised work parties to unload the baggage holds on the coaches and the convoy of lorries which had followed with the rest of the kit. With surprising speed the job was done and the piles of Bergens and equipment were collected by their owners and taken to the living quarters, armouries or stores, as appropriate.

Sam, having found her luggage, approached the RQMS, the quartermaster’s chief right-hand man and the person in charge of allocating bed spaces. The companies had each been allocated barn-like dorms – there were some other smaller units which had been divvied up to the officers and SNCOs, and most of Sam’s LAD had opted to bunk down in the corner of the workshop. The trouble with all of these spaces was the lack of privacy. Not that Sam was a prude, but if there was any chance of separate female accommodation she’d happily go for it.

‘Where am I sleeping, Q?’ she asked

He sucked his teeth. ‘It’s a bit Hobson’s choice, ma’am.’

That didn’t sound hopeful. So what was the choice? Sleeping with dozens of snoring, farting soldiers or on a camp bed in the open with just a mossie net for protection.

‘And?’

‘There’s a sort of storeroom, ma’am. I thought you and Cooper from BHQ could share it.’

Sam remembered Corporal Cooper – the pretty female clerk she’d met on her first arrival at 1 Herts and the one Blake had danced with at the corporals’ club ball. That was all right. There was nothing she could object to in that.

‘It’s very cramped,’ said the RQMS.

‘That’s OK,’ said Sam. ‘To be honest, I’d been bracing myself for much worse.’

‘Wait till you see it.’

‘Lead the way.’

Well, thought Sam, ‘storeroom’ might have been a bit generous. Cubby hole was nearer the mark but there was room for two camp beds and it had a light. Just as well really as there wasn’t a window, but they could leave the door open to get some air.

The RQMS left her to settle in, which amounted to little more than plonking her Bergen on her bed. With no spare space at all, unpacking wasn’t an option. Sam scratched her head. How the hell she and Cooper would both manage to get dressed in the morning in the six-inch space between the beds was a problem that would need addressing. Maybe they could take it in turns. Not that it was something to worry about right now. A shadow fell across the door. Sam turned and saw her roomie.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Cooper. I hope you don’t mind slumming it with me.’ Corporal Cooper looked bewildered. ‘Joke,’ said Sam.

‘Oh.’ Cooper gave a nervous laugh.

‘A bad one,’ said Sam, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.