Wendy Jones - The Songbird and the Soldier

Sam carefully opened up the press and counted out the flowers she had saved there. Thirty-two. Good, that gave her one each for every child in her class and a few left over for mishaps, and knowing little Jimmy Richards there were bound to be mishaps. She had seen her flowers turned into crowns, fairies, the sun and endless footballs, but it was those with the imagination to see beyond the obvious that always excited her. She closed the press again and placed it onto her desk with her school diary and the verse she had written out about flowers to go on the classroom wall. She sat back down. “Do you want to go for a walk, Humph?” Humphrey was on his feet in a flash, his stubby little tail wagging eagerly. “Come on then, let’s get out of here.”

Dean called Sam once after he got back from training and Sam asked for his address out in Afghanistan, but despite him giving it to her, he was still too busy to catch up. The time passed when he was due to leave and Sam had heard nothing. She wrote, not too emotionally, as she was still a little unsure about whether he would actually get the letter and who else would see it on the way. There was no reply.

Nearly three weeks passed and still she heard nothing. In place of eager anticipation, she greeted the fall of the mail each day on the mat with the resigned habit of just checking.

On Wednesday, Sam had had a particularly wearing day in school. Jimmy Richards had been caught stealing another child’s tooth to try and extort extra money out of the tooth fairy. Bethany-May had managed to make her whole group of friends hysterical in front of a school inspector over a class pet hamster who had somehow been let out of his cage, (by whom she had yet to determine) and to cap it all off, Peter Davies chose that very same day to bring up his entire lunch all over Lucy Eccles’ lovely long hair.

Sam walked into the house and dropped her bike helmet and bag to the floor. Her mum walked out of the kitchen to greet her. “Oh. As bad as that, was it?”

“Worse.”

Sam’s mum ushered her inside and sat her down with a cup of tea while she heard all about Sam’s miserable day. She tried very hard not to laugh, but by the end of the tale even Sam could see the funny side of things and she felt a whole lot better. “It’s all right for you,” she said. “You only had one child to deal with, I’ve got 28 and Jimmy’s got to count for at least two.”

Mrs Litton laughed. “I’m sorry, dear, but you just couldn’t write the stuff you come home with,” she said, composing herself again.

“Something smells nice,” Sam said.

“Baked ham,” her mum told her.

Sam sniffed at her hands. “Ugh! I stink of sick.”

Mrs Litton smiled and told Sam to go for a nice warm shower and wash her hair as there was plenty of time before tea.

The following day, all was well with the world again. Mary Appleby had a nice shiny fifty pence piece from the tooth fairy, all the pets stayed safely contained and no one was sick over anyone else. Sam cycled home feeling much better about the world. Her job was great, she had a lovely family and the weather was finally starting to feel like spring.

Sam got in and hung up her things. She found her mum sat at the dining room table with the local paper spread out in front of her.

“Anything interesting?” Sam asked.

“There might be actually, yes.”

Sam walked around the table and looked over her mother’s shoulder. Mrs Litton pointed to a terraced house, on the other side of town, with a tiny front garden and next to a street light. Sam looked at the price and then read on.

“What do you think?” her mum asked.

“Well, yes. It looks okay, doesn’t it?”

“Shall we have a drive past and nose about this weekend?”

“Yeah, why not.” She grinned excitedly. Have you got anything sorted out for tea?” she asked.

“Not yet. Your dad rang a short while ago. He’s popping round to Uncle Gerald’s after work, to help him with his car, so it’s just the two of us tonight.”

“Great. Let’s get a Chinese. My treat.”

“What a good idea, but I’ll pay. You can pay when we go to your house for tea.”

Sam laughed. “I won’t be able to afford a Chinese once I’ve got my own place.”

“So, we’ll eat beans on toast. But tonight, I’m paying.”

Half way across the world, Andy was settling into life in theatre. It was a basic way of life, with few of the luxuries of modern living that most people take for granted. Boredom was commonplace and the food, by necessity, was uninspiring.

The vast expanse of sky had been the first thing to hit him when he stepped off the plane in Kandahar. It had been the middle of the night but the sky was clear and it was hung with a myriad of stars. The atmosphere had changed perceptibly en route, with the excitement of the beginning of the flight subduing by mid-flight and then replaced with a more contained sense of tension by the end.

The empty stretchers on the plane had been a chilling reminder of where they were heading. When they transferred onto the Hercules for the short stretch to Helmand, donning helmets and body armour for a blacked-out approach, the adrenaline had definitely begun to flow.

Camp Bastion, in northern Helmand, was the closest to civilisation they had, with its facilities and air-con pods, but it carried with it its own shadows. The hospital for all the casualties was based there too. But for now, home was a forward operations base to the south near Lashkar Gar.

This was a compound that had been deserted by fleeing locals during some fierce fighting a couple of years before. Andy looked around him at his fellow soldiers. They were all back safe. Relief was expressed in the whoops and cries of the men in his team as they dispersed to their various corners and took off their kits.

Andy checked in with the guys who had been on guard that day, to see if there had been any more contact while they were away. There hadn’t. He looked about him. Piles of water bottles were stacked up under a tarp in one corner and Andy wished he could dive in and bathe in every single one. He was filthy. Dust had got in everything. Mud caked around the bottom of his legs from crossing the drainage ditches and tacking in and out of the fields. It baked hard in the sun as he walked and added to the considerable weight he carried around with him. He took off his helmet and started to remove his body armour. Tomorrow was their turn to man the base while the other team ventured out, so he could wash his clothes in the morning and they would dry out in the heat of the day. He checked his rifle and made sure it was clean and then went in search of food.

The following day they took a delivery of mail, one of the highlights of the week for most of them, but Andy didn’t lose too much sleep looking forward to it. A letter from his mum every couple of weeks and the odd parcel was the most he could expect. However, if one of the lads happened to have a birthday while they were there, you never knew what treat might wing its way over to them.

He decided to take personal responsibility for distributing the mail that day. He wandered through the compound calling out the names and delivering the post to each in turn. Some men got loads. Andy assumed they must have a harem back home constantly writing to them, while others got only one or two. Where they were, they received deliveries of mail about once a week. In larger bases there was internet communication, but he knew from experience that those in other more remote posts had it worse. He shoved his letter from his mother into his pocket and carried on calling out the names.

In a shady, mud-floored room in the corner of the compound Dean answered his call. Andy walked in and handed over a bundle of letters. Dean thanked him and started rifling through his post to see who his letters were from. Spike looked over at the number of letters Dean had received and rolled his eyes. Andy handed Spike his letter from home and he lay back and began to read.