The Poppy Factory

She tried over-the-counter sleeping pills but, although they helped her get to sleep, they had little effect in preventing the nightmares. The only thing which seemed to work was booze – whisky or vodka seemed to work best, but almost any alcohol would do. She took to taking a couple of shots before cleaning her teeth each bedtime.

The anger thing started on the last day of their holiday.

They’d had such a joyful, exhilarating week. Both were absolute beginners but had, in their different ways, quickly mastered the art of skiing. Although never elegant, Nate’s muscle-power helped him stay upright even on the toughest terrains. She, with her lower centre of gravity and fine-honed fitness, quickly mastered the art of carving a stylish turn. Her graceful stance regularly earned their otherwise dour instructor’s weather-beaten smile, and his call of ‘Ottimo, Jessica! Bellissimo!’ had become a catch-phrase between them, even away from the slopes.

Elated by their success, the physical exertion, the breathtakingly beautiful mountains and the cold, bright air, they found themselves drinking a bottle of wine at lunchtime, meeting up with fellow chalet guests for several glasses of glühwein at teatime, imbibing more wine with dinner and at least one or two brandies as a nightcap. Jess slept better than she had in months – a whole week without a single nightmare.

Taking a midnight walk on the final evening, arm in arm, the snow crunching beneath their feet and clouds of warm breath mingling in the freezing air, Nate had stopped in his tracks and grabbed both of her hands.

‘When you get out of the Army, shall we move in together?’

‘Oh my God, Nate. Do you really mean it?’

‘Of course I bloody mean it. Hurry up and say yes before we freeze to death.’

‘Then of course I will, you idiot.’ She jumped into his arms and knocked them both to the ground, finding herself flooded so powerfully with joy that she almost forgot to breathe. How lucky she was to be alive, so happy, with the man she loved and all their lives in front of her.

But even as they lay there, flat on their backs in the soft snow at the side of the track, looking up at the stars, the memories intruded into her consciousness. She was reminded of the times she and Vorny would lie in the dust of the compound looking up at those same ribbons of brilliance in the blackness of the desert night sky, and how the lads used to tease them for it. Where were they all tonight, those boys, how were they adjusting to life at home? She hoped they were happy, too.

And then, out of the blue, she was hit by a wave of anger about James and the others, for the fact that she would never see them again, that they would never experience the joy of lying in the snow on a starry night with the person they loved. The anger quickly cooled into sorrow, and she began to weep silently, only this time the tears were from profound, irretrievable loss.

Where did these crazy, over-the-top emotions come from? She’d always prided herself on being level-headed, not prone to over-dramatics. These days her reactions seemed to be all over the place. It must just be the ‘adjustment’ they all talked about, she said to herself, it would pass, just as soon as she got back to work. She wiped away her tears, leaned over Nate and kissed him. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘More than you will ever know.’

The following day, for no reason she could fathom other than she had a hangover and their lovely holiday was over, she found herself becoming irritated by tiny, silly things: the way he insisted on tying a red ribbon on the handle of his suitcase so that he could recognise it on the luggage carousel, the way he opened every drawer and cupboard in their room to make sure nothing was left behind, the way he checked the hotel bill carefully, item by item.

Why should such small and perfectly reasonable acts annoy her so much? She simply couldn’t understand it but, each time, she felt the anger prickling the back of her head, the nauseous churning of her stomach. She cursed herself for being so impatient – he was only taking care of her, after all.

‘You okay? You’re a bit quiet this morning,’ he said, on the bus to the airport.

‘Oh I don’t know. I feel a bit rough, but it’s probably more the thought of having to go back to work,’ she said.

‘I know what you mean. Year Nine first thing on Monday,’ he said. ‘At least you’ve only got three months to go, haven’t you? Light duties and all?’

She grimaced. The prospect of ‘light duties’ made her feel even more irritable. She would be stuck in barracks, away from Nate all week staffing a daily clinic for malingering squaddies with sore throats and ingrowing toenails, being on the rota for out-of-hours emergency call-outs, serving time until her early release came up. Now they knew she was on the way out, there’d be no more advanced training courses, no going out on exercise, no requirement to keep fit.

She’d just have to grin and bear it. A job with the London ambulance service was waiting for her after Easter, she would move in with Nate and they could start to plan their future together. It’s all good, she told herself, firmly. Stop being such a misery.

But grinning and bearing it did not come easy.

The clinic sessions at the barracks were as dull and dispiriting as she’d feared. Time dragged more slowly than ever as she examined a succession of soldiers’ smelly feet with their blisters, veruccas, and minor sprains or, for light relief perhaps, a touch of man flu, earache or tonsillitis. The highlight of her first week was being called out late one night to the Military Police cells for a soldier covered in blood and so drunk he could barely speak. He had a six centimetre gash from one ear to the back of his neck, obviously from falling backwards onto something hard.

The last time she’d seen this much blood was after a Taliban RPG had landed in the compound, knocking her out and sending shrapnel flying everywhere. She’d come round to a scene of carnage, lots of head wounds and blood everywhere because the soldiers had been at rest and not wearing helmets or body armour. Ignoring her own dizziness, she’d scrambled to her feet and set to work. When she and Vorny had finished checking everyone over they discovered that, by some miracle, most of the injuries were shallow cuts which needed only simple stitching. Only a couple of lads were more seriously hurt and needed evacuation, and they later heard back that both of them had survived and weren’t likely to suffer any long term after-effects. ‘Saved their bloody lives, those two lassies of yours,’ the surgeon told her CO later.

She checked the drunken squaddie over, swabbed him down, shaved an unnecessarily wide strip of hair on either side of the wound, stitched him up and told them to wake him every half hour to check for concussion, with a bucket of cold water if necessary. That’ll teach him, she thought to herself.

One day she diagnosed a case of ‘housemaid’s knee’. The spotty lad gazed at her in confusion: ‘I ain’t been doin’ no housework.’

‘It’s an inflammation of the tissues in front of the kneecap. You just need to take it easy for a couple of weeks and it’ll sort itself out.’

‘Can’t tell me sergeant I’ve got housemaid’s knee,’ he muttered. ‘Never bloody live it down.’

She would normally have found this funny, but for some reason his pathetic embarrassment irritated the hell out of her. She took a deep breath, wrote ‘Prepatellar Bursitis’ on a note and passed it to him. ‘Will that do?’

He tried to pronounce the Latin and gave up.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said, with a brazen smile. ‘Fancy a drink sometime?’

‘Get lost, you cheeky bastard,’ she said, showing him the door.

‘I just can’t cope with the pettiness of it all,’ she shouted to her mother as they struggled along the shingle beach in the face of a bitter cold wind whistling off the North Sea. She’d been given a few mid-week days off and, to be honest, was pleased to have her parents to herself. ‘Their stupid little complaints. I feel like slapping them, telling them to man up.’

Her mother had suggested the walk after she’d come downstairs at three in the morning to find Jess watching the shopping channel with a large glass of her father’s whisky on the table in front of her.

‘What’s up, love?’ she’d asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Jess noticed for the first time that her mother’s hair, the gingery side of auburn like her own, was turning grey.

‘Can’t sleep. It’s just too quiet here,’ she replied, trying to make light of it. ‘What are you doing up, anyway?’

‘Saw the light on when I went for a pee.’

Jess had been looking forward to a few days by the seaside, where she could take long walks in the sea air and hopefully knock herself out with physical tiredness, but it hadn’t worked like that. For the second night running she had lain awake for hours before giving up and going downstairs to raid her father’s drinks cabinet.

‘You shouldn’t drink so much of that stuff,’ Susan had said, looking pointedly at the glass.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jess said. ‘I’ll buy Dad another bottle. Go back to bed. I’ll be fine.’

Later that morning, out on the beach, she found herself almost enjoying the distraction of physical discomfort as the wind slashed at their faces.

‘Tell me about this drinking,’ her mother had started.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Jess said. Admitting the nightmares to her mother would only make her more anxious – better to gloss over it. ‘Just fed up with work. It’s so boring. I can’t wait to get out.’

‘You haven’t got long to go now, have you?’

‘Four weeks, that’s all. I can deal with it. Thanks for being so understanding, Mum.’

But that evening she lost it again. Her father had insisted on doing a barbecue in spite of the fact that it was still only February, and bitterly cold. The wind had dropped, he said, and besides the barbecue was under cover of the patio awning. He would be perfectly dry, and once everything was cooked they could eat inside. Except that it began to bucket with rain, and while Jess tried to persuade him to abandon the idea, Susan had been placatory.

‘He does it all the time, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He enjoys it, and the food tastes so much better on the barbecue. You’ll never dissuade him, so you might as well give up trying.’

‘But it’s pouring, Mum. He’ll get soaked, and so will the food.’ She felt her chest tightening, the tell-tale heat tingling at the back of her neck, and tried to take deep breaths, but it came out anyway. ‘He could perfectly well come inside to cook, and we could have a lovely meal but he’s just determined to spoil our evening with his pig-headed insistence. It’s so fucking stupid,’ she shouted.

‘Watch your language, young woman,’ Mike called through the patio door.

She exploded then, shouting, ‘I can’t bear to watch. I’m going out.’

She’d stomped off to the only pub in the village, hoping there would be no-one who recognised her or engaged her in conversation. Fortunately the place was deserted, so she sat by the fire and read a dog-eared red-top newspaper, sickened by the photos of semi-naked women on what seemed like every other page, while downing three double whiskies in quick succession. She paid the pub premium for a bottle to replace her father’s Johnnie Walker and hid it inside her coat as she headed home.

Her parents were watching a nature documentary on television.