The Poppy Factory

Without the sedative of alcohol she found it hard to sleep, sensing Nate’s every movement, hearing each little snore, and blasted to open-eyed wakefulness by any police or ambulance siren within half a mile. When she finally slept, the nightmares returned, but subtly altered. These were not of the breath-stopping panic, of torn flesh and limbs, nor the visceral howls of boys in pain, but of the aftermaths of those terrifying moments, of feeling so exhausted that her limbs would not move, of the heat which seemed to suffocate the air out of her lungs, and the dust storms that whipped her face as the rescue helicopter rose into the air taking the injured men to safety. And, always, the gut-wrenching anxiety that perhaps she could have done more to save a limb, or even a life.

One night she woke with her bladder aching and made it to the toilet just in time. She had been dreaming that she was back in the compound where the squats cabin was located twenty yards away. The men just pissed against the outside wall, the girls had to risk a scary dash in the dark across open ground. That, or pee discreetly into a yellow sharps container and hope the sound didn’t wake anyone. Either way it was enough to make you go easy on your intake of liquids after sunset.

She also dreamt of the poppy, just the once: not of the flower with its silky red petals gently fluttering in the breeze, but of the headless green stem, trembling and twitching like a dying man.

After dinner on the second evening, Nate said, ‘Tell me what’s going on, Jess?’

‘Going on?’

‘Those nightmares of yours.’

‘They come and go,’ she said. ‘It’s getting better.’

‘Doesn’t feel like that to me. Last night you started shouting and then you sat up in bed and seemed to be fighting someone off. You nearly clocked me one.’

She laughed. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll try and keep my arms to myself tonight.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need to get some help?’

‘Quite sure. It’ll be fine once I’m out of the Army. Only a week now.’

She rose exhausted each morning but found that she could not sit still for more than a few minutes. Trying to use up her restless energy, she went for long walks or jogged round the local park, observing the yummy mummies so distracted by their gossip that the babies crawled into flowerbeds to eat soil. Their pampered pedigree dogs ran out of control and, she hoped, were having unprotected sex with all the wrong species. Planning her life ahead with Nate, she visited a couple of letting agents and viewed four flats in the area; more spacious, two-bedroomed places that cost a fortune in rent.

On Friday evening he returned in high spirits, having been to the pub with his mates to celebrate the end of a tough week, and ate two helpings of her carefully-prepared lamb tagine with appreciative enthusiasm. Sitting beside him on the sofa, watching television with a mug of tea in her hand, she imagined that this was what their lives might be like forever. She felt more at peace than she’d known for months.

‘I’ve invited a few friends from school round tomorrow evening to meet you,’ he said, out of the blue. ‘Hope that’s okay?’

‘So they can approve me?’ she said, feeling wary.

‘No, you idiot, just to meet you. To celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

‘Your safe return, the end of your contract? I dunno. Do we need a reason?’

‘Can I invite a couple of my friends as well, to even the balance?’

She rang Vorny, who accepted eagerly, and her brother Jonny, who at first said he was busy and then, when she pressed him, admitted that he’d promised to spend the evening with his new girlfriend.

‘Bring her too. What’s her name?’

‘Sarah,’ he said. ‘Oh, okay then. She’s dying to meet the Afghanistan heroine, so I s’pose tomorrow’s as good a time as any. Be gentle, won’t you?’

‘You know me.’

‘Only too well.’

On Saturday morning she brought Nate toast, coffee and the newspaper in bed and headed off to the supermarket for party provisions. When she reached the checkout she discovered that, along with the crisps, nibbles and soft drinks, the boxes of wine and beer cans, she’d slipped a bottle of whisky into the trolley. She could barely remember doing it, but was too embarrassed to give it back to the cashier. At the flat, she hid it in the back of a drawer and tried to forget it was there.

I will not drink tonight, she promised herself.

But, getting ready that evening and finding herself unaccountably nervous at the prospect of meeting Nate’s work colleagues, her resolve crumbled and, with trembling hands, she took a couple of slugs to steady her stomach. It worked a treat. Vorny arrived early – they’d planned it that way – and they had a couple more discreet glasses together.

Nate’s friends were two couples, Matt and Louisa, Benjamin and Aleesha, and his head of PE, Mary, a tall, rangy woman of about forty. Jess submitted herself to their scrutiny: ‘Good to meet Nate’s mystery woman, after all this time’, and, ‘so you’re the tough girl who went to the front line in Afghanistan?’ She enlisted Vorny to help with the inevitable interrogation, which ranged from the benign: ‘Did you actually volunteer to go out there? You must be so brave, I’d be terrified,’ to the incredulous: ‘Did you really have to carry guns? Even as medics?’

They were nice enough people, but conversations with civilians always made her feel like a stranger from another planet. It was impossible to explain, or for them to gain any understanding beyond the most superficial level, what being on tour in a country like Afghanistan is really like.

The arrival of Jonny and Sarah was the excuse she needed, and she left Vorny fielding questions while she opened more bottles of wine and took the opportunity to slosh a whisky top up into her innocent glass of coke.

Sarah was a tall, slim girl with a dark-eyed seriousness about her – quite a contrast to her sturdy blond brother, whose open face was always ready with a joker’s smile. Jess could tell immediately that she was different from her brother’s previous girlfriends – less glamorous and self-absorbed, more poised and alert to the world around her. From their secret smiles and his soft looks it was clear that this relationship was the real thing, and she was glad for him.

In the past, to the anxious bewilderment of their parents, he’d dropped out of two university courses in consecutive years, and seemed to be settling for a life of minimum-wage drudgery. Then, with the help of a string-pulling uncle, he’d landed an IT post in a law company. The boss had recognised his potential, sent him on several training courses and promoted him twice. It had been the making of him, as their mother liked to say.

She’d never thought of her brother as much of a looker, but his new sense of self-esteem had magically given his features clearer definition, helped by the fact that he seemed to have lost weight and revamped his wardrobe. He’s quite a catch, Jess found herself thinking.

It turned out that Sarah was a teacher too, so it became a party of two halves: the school gang having a heated conversation about education, while Jess joined Jonny and Vorny sneaking a clandestine smoke in the tiny patio garden. Away from Nate’s sharp eyes she drank steadily and happily, sharing old jokes, enjoying the way her brother and her best friend sparred with each other. Everything was going perfectly.

The rest of the evening passed in a flash, until everyone had made their excuses and left, except for Vorny, who was staying the night, and Matt, a short and slightly balding man with an incipient beer-belly whose girlfriend had fallen asleep in the bedroom. Jess and Vorny sat in a happily intoxicated blur on the sofa, half listening to the boys having a rambling, slightly drunken discussion about politics.

Without warning, Matt turned his unsteady gaze towards them. ‘What do you Army girls think we should do about Syria then? Are we just going to let them go on killing each other till there’s no-one left except crazy radicalised religious zealots?’

You Army girls.How could Nate be friends with such a plonker? Neither seemed willing to reply until Vorny piped up in a quiet, reasonable voice: ‘There’s no right answer of course. It’s a tragic situation but it’s really complex, and I don’t think there’s much we can do to resolve it without creating even more trouble for the future.’

That should shut him up, Jess thought gratefully.

It didn’t. ‘What, shouldn’t we be riding in on white chargers this time, ready to implant the blessed gift of peaceful democracy? Like we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan?’

It was a deliberate challenge; Jess felt sure he’d been waiting all evening for the opportunity. She dug her fingernails painfully into her palm and tried to take a deep breath but her chest felt as though a large pair of hands was crushing her lungs. The anger flowed like a dangerous fire through her body, making her head ache, blurring her eyesight, cramping her stomach.

‘Let’s not go there, Matt,’ she could hear Nate cautioning, but it was too late.

A voice in her head warned her to stop, but it was easily ignored. Her tongue loosened itself and the words spilled out, without consent from her brain. ‘I suppose you’ve travelled widely in these countries, talked to many experts?’

‘Jess, don’t you think …?’ she could hear Nate trying to intervene, but she talked over him. ‘So, have you? Have you? And if not, then I’m just wondering what gives you the moral authority to prognosticate about the impact of military intervention in these countries?’

His piggy eyes stared back, widening with alarm. ‘I was just asking your opinion. From two people who have been there.’

Nate was now sitting upright, on high alert. ‘Enough, Jess. Lay off the dogs. This has been a nice evening. Don’t ruin it.’

‘I don’t think for one minute you were asking for our opinion,’ she heard her own voice, low and dangerous. ‘You were giving yours. And you think you have the right to have an opinion, in your safe little job a million miles away from any conflict, having probably never even had a single conversation with an Afghan or an Iraqi, and certainly without an iota of understanding about what we have been trying to achieve for them out there. Or of the fact that good people, much better people than you will ever be, have given their lives to help free the people of those countries from oppression. And you have the nerve to take the piss.’

Matt rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘I’m sorry to have offended. It’s time we were going home.’

Jess stood too. Discovering that she was, in her heels, slightly taller than him made her feel invincible. She could have floored him with a single blow.

‘Is that it? You run away, the moment anyone challenges you?’ she snarled. ‘What a great example you must be for your students. A pathetic, clever-dick, know-it-all little …’