Who Are You? (15 page)

The explosions, the blood, the shredded flesh, the severed limbs and the hopelessness of trying to hold a comrade’s body together while the remnants of life pump out of him. That desperation in the eyes that shows the realization that this is it, the last moment. The pleading, the terror, the acceptance and then the dull emptiness. One minute, one second ago there was life and then nothing but nothing.

Yet not nothing. They left a lifelong legacy of their last moments. Fuck the forever in our hearts nonsense. More like forever in our heads. What a contradiction: soldiers – strong, muscular, bodies honed into warriors. But warrior flesh was no match for metal, and warrior minds no match for memories.

At some point you turn into an adrenalin-addicted zombie. You fear action and yet you yearn for it. Every sound, every movement becomes a threat, you spend every conscious moment in a state of hyper-awareness, hyper-vigilance, and then even through the nights, in sleep, there is no respite as the mind replays and revisits the horrors and the fear and the excitement … Yes, the raw, bloody, vengeful excitement of destroying those bastards, of unleashing the dogs of war upon them. The satisfaction of watching the bloody fountain of a dying man several hundred yards away, the screams carried on the wind and then the brief silence as the black puff of smoke – like a djinn rising – twists up into the cloudless sky. Smoke and dust and heat and screams and sweat. And unassuageable fear. And then the fear subsides, as though the acceptance of grim inevitability settles upon you; the inevitability of not if, but when. They say when this happens that there is something in the eyes that shows you have crossed over from a state of man to a state of machine. You are unofficially dehumanized. The eyes seem to void themselves of emotion and to look into them is to see nothing but an empty stare. The window to the soul is shut, because the soul has already left the building. And then you know it will be a long road back to reach the human you once were but who is no bloody use to you here in this hell on earth.

*    *    *    *    *

Juliet lies awake next to Alex. He is on his back, his throat vibrating with every intake of breath. It’s unusual to listen to him sleeping so deeply. She can see the faint orange glow of the street lamp filtering through the curtains, projecting the window square onto the ceiling. The only sound she can hear, apart from Alex’s snoring, is the distant yowling of cats. Tonight of all nights is the quietest of the year; no one getting up to go to work. Not even the street cleaners, although it would be too early for them even if it wasn’t Boxing Day. While the house sleeps, Juliet’s been lying here awake, beside her husband, for maybe half an hour, just listening and thinking. Downstairs Ben will be sprawled like a starfish in his little bed, his duvet half off, while Geraldine will be rendered unconscious by the amount of alcohol she’s poured down her throat.

She’s been thinking back to FightbackGirl’s message about her brother killing himself. Juliet wonders if Alex ever considers it, and what she and Ben would do if he carried it out. She’s read on the internet that soldiers under constant attack, losing men every day, imagine what it will be like to die – not if, but when; instead of hoping they will live, they transfer that hope to
how
they will die, how they will live their last minutes, what kind of a death they will have. If you put a human into that situation, contemplating their death every waking minute, what kind of a person comes out at the other end? Juliet knows the answer: a person like Alex. That almost makes her laugh because it is such a ludicrous statement. Alex didn’t come home; Alex is dead. The person she knew as Alex does not exist any more. Like a 1960s horror movie, everything about him, externally, convinces you that you are getting back the person that you knew and loved, but as time goes on you realize that the exterior is just that – a shell, a piece of window dressing to confuse you – because inside that person, that thing, is actually an alien. All the emotion, the love, the feeling, the empathy, has been stripped out, because as a killing machine, a picker-up of shreds of their comrades, a seer of things never meant for human tolerance, how can you expect a human to survive?

But how would she feel, without him, if he did choose to end it all? Would she be like Geraldine, feeling both relieved and free? She tries to picture herself dressed in black, with Ben at her side in a tiny black jacket and matching short trousers. Would she be wearing Alex’s medals pinned onto her coat, or would that be inappropriate under the circumstances? Is she crying or dry-eyed in the picture? Does she feel regret as the curtain swishes closed on the silent runners removing Alex forever? She searches as deeply inside of herself as she is able to go, but she can’t find any feelings. She can see herself so clearly, but she can’t actually inhabit herself, or attach any emotional currency to the scene. And because she can’t
actually
feel, she tries to imagine the feelings. Would she feel shame because of what he has done – a war hero taking the coward’s way out; a man unable to stand and fight any more? Would the shame reflect upon her? Would people blame her, somehow, for not being able to save Alex’s tormented soul? What about poor James, who didn’t have the choice to come home, and all the others who had no choice? Instead of getting the support due to a supposedly grieving widow, would she get rejection and derision? She hears Alex’s breathing beside her, steady and strong. It’s so weird trying to comprehend whether or not she would be upset, because so much of her married life has been lived in fear of losing him. Lying here, just thinking like this, she feels an almost irresistible urge to snuggle into him. It’s illogical and foolish, but she yearns to have his arms wrapped around her to make her feel safe, like he used to be able to do, if only for a brief moment, just to try and recover the love. She supposes that she can’t blame Alex entirely. She’s not that stupid or even that vindictive. But she can blame him for the fact that he was the one person who seemed able to save her; Alex made her come alive again, and to take that away from her was something she couldn’t forgive.

It started off as just verbal abuse, though even ‘just’ verbal abuse can be pretty tough to cope with. Barely noticeable. ‘Oh fucking hell’ and ‘For Christ’s sake’ muttered under his breath when she said anything; it was so subtle that she didn’t even know if she was meant to hear it. But it progressed to ‘Just leave me alone and stop asking your fucking questions’ and ‘God, can’t you stop your bloody nagging?’ when she asked him something simple, such as ‘What time would you like your supper?’ But there was nothing physical, not then. She really did try to be understanding. It was something she and the other Army wives talked about. ‘They’ve got to release their bottled-up aggression somehow’ and ‘You mustn’t take it personally.’ It just went with the job and she had a duty to put up with it. Well, fine. Fine if he could have balanced it with a bit of loving. What was really hard was the fact that she lost having Alex to talk to. She had never known, or imagined, the sort of loneliness that she could feel while inside a marriage. And it was nothing to do with the long absences on tour. She didn’t get the same sort of miserable, gut-wringing loneliness, because she looked forward to him coming home and spent most of her energy worrying about whether he
would
come home. Well, maybe it was gut-wringing, but not in the same way. In many ways it was even worse when Alex was home, because it seemed as if the solution to her suffering was there, but he refused to provide it. He wouldn’t, couldn’t talk about what he’d been doing. He refused to open up about how he was feeling. He couldn’t seem to settle into any sort of domesticity at all. The only time he seemed relaxed was when he was with the ‘boys’. And it would have taken a bigger fool than Juliet not to realize that he was desperate to get back into theatre. And all the time she could feel herself shrivelling and dying inside. But she soldiered on, regardless of the fact that Alex didn’t seem to place any value on the fact that it was hard for her, and for Ben, waiting and worrying. All the time that he was away she, like the other wives, children and parents, waited anxiously. If she was lucky she might get a phone call from him. More often than not he could never say when he would be returning. Information was scarce and often incorrect. Lots of wives had stopped watching or listening to the news, because it just intensified their agony. The awful waiting for the statement: ‘The family has been informed …’, the sigh of relief, but so much more than relief. The sense that life is carrying on unchanged for a little while longer. But at the same time the guilty realization that the relief given to one family carries the heaviest cost to another. War is brutal, and the casualties are random. But in 2009 Alex’s battalion came under the fiercest fighting since the conflict began. The news was full of the daily losses, but there were other stories filtering through via the squaddies who weren’t on tour, but who had heard from their mates who were – that the men were vomiting up their breakfast as they left the compound, knowing that at least one of them was unlikely to be returning. The pressure they were constantly under, the fear they endured was incomprehensible to anyone not going through it. And that was the problem. Surviving intact was not the same as surviving unscathed. There were physical scars, and there were mental scars.

Juliet has read on the internet that post-traumatic stress disorder is caused by the brain’s inability to process the memory of a life-threatening, or extremely traumatic life incident. Apparently at the time of the incident, the brain puts you into a sort of autonomic mode so that you can deal with the situation, because you have to act instantly and there’s literally no time for thinking. The thinking and processing to memory part comes later. Only when it fails to file itself into memory, then it becomes a disorder. It stays in the conscious part of the mind, replaying itself over and over … and the more you try to stop it, the worse it will be, because it has to be replayed in order to be processed.

You need to get it sorted in your mind. So if you don’t have a chance to do that, and you’re in a war zone, where you’re being traumatized over and over and over again, and the mind never ever gets a chance to assimilate it and file it, then hey presto, you end up being a headcase like Alex.

There was a time when Juliet felt sympathetic. There was a time when she tried to understand. God knows, she’d heard stories from other wives who were going through similar trials. It was no fun for any of them being left at home. She’d lived through the bereavements, the marches, the tributes.

She’d seen the headlights arriving on the patch late at night, the slowing of the engine. She’d felt the indescribable fear as you will yourself to get out of bed and make your way to the window, to see where the car will come to a halt. Will it be you this time? And you watch from the window as the casualty notification officer, immaculate in his khaki service dress, often accompanied by the padre, pulls up outside someone
else’s
house. And then you hear that inhuman wail – no, inhuman is the wrong word, because it is probably the rawest, the truest expression of what it is to be human that you will ever hear. Primeval. Not a sound anyone would ever wish to hear twice. And yet on the camp, with all the neat little houses so close together, it was a sound one heard over and over. The sight of a window opening, a head poking through, the screaming repetition: ‘No … no … go away … NOOOOOO …’ Just thinking about it now, Juliet feels the hairs on her forearms stand up. She remembers the first time she heard it. Remembers rushing to the bathroom and throwing up. And then the nightmares. Night after night after night.

Then he came home.

CHAPTER

10

Alex has no recollections of anything before, and barely any during. Is it the flailing arms, the legs kicking at him, the scratch of sharp fingernails on his forearms? Maybe it’s something more subtle. Perhaps her scent, or the feel of her skin, the slimness of her neck against his hands. And the noise, the animal-like grunts that woke him. Because if Alex knows anything at all, he knows for sure that he was asleep when it happened.

He releases his grip and she slips from the bed to the floor, coughing and choking and gasping for breath. He flicks on the light and tries to make sense of the scene. Juliet’s fingers are clutching at the red marks on her throat. There’s an angry blue mark on the side of her head, and bleeding from her scalp where it appears that some of her hair has been pulled out. And there is a look in her eyes of absolute, concentrated hatred and raw fear.

‘You fucking bastard!’ she hisses, when she has gathered enough breath to speak. Her voice rasps from her bruised throat.

‘What did you do?’ he asks quietly, getting hold of her arms and pulling her to her feet.

‘Do? You ask
me
what I did?’ She is sobbing quietly, rubbing at her throat.

‘Yes Juliet. I’m asking you what
you
did.’

‘You nearly fucking killed me. I don’t think this is about what I did, do you?’ Her voice is hoarse.

‘You must have jumped me while I was asleep.’

‘Oh yeah? You think I’ve got a death wish? When we all know what could happen. Right, Alex. That’s really likely.’

Alex pushes her gently down onto the bed. Then he walks into the bathroom and gets hold of a towel. He runs the cold tap and holds a corner of the towel under it. Then he takes it to Juliet and starts dabbing at the blood on her head. The purple mark is getting darker and the blood from her scalp is running into her hair line and down into her hair. The white towel has bright scarlet stains seeping into it.

‘You tried to kill me!’ she repeats. ‘You should be locked up, Alex Miller. You’re a fucking lunatic!’

‘You know the rules, Juliet.’

‘Sure, I know the rules. I didn’t touch you. Look at me, for Christ’s sake …’ She gets up from the bed and collapses down onto it again. She puts her fingertips to her head and feels the sticky wet warmth. Then she looks at the red patches on her fingertips. ‘You aren’t going to be able to explain this away.’ And there’s a look of something unexpected in her eyes which Alex reads as triumph.