Wendy Jones - The Songbird and the Soldier

“How’s Sam doing?” Andy asked, turning back to Dean momentarily before studying hard the name on the next letter in his hand.

Dean looked up. “Shit, check this out, guys.” He held out a picture of a girl Andy did not recognise. She was a blonde girl wearing a bikini and posing provocatively. Dean snatched the photo back. “Hey, don’t wear her out! Spike.” He held the photo up for Spike to see.

“Got any of those going spare?” Spike asked.

“I’ll swap you for your sister.”

“On your bike.”

“Your sister is my bike.”

“Piss off!” Spike launched a dirty sock across the room and the lads laughed. “Cocky little shit!” he mumbled.

Dean grinned and threw the sock back. He looked back to Andy, still standing in the room. “What?”

“Are you and Sam no longer an item?”

Dean rifled through his things and pulled out a handful of old letters. “Oh, I’ve got one in here from her too somewhere…” He flicked through, flipped a letter over and read the back. “Yeah, here you go. This one’s from her.”

Andy’s guts twisted. He wanted to tear him limb from limb for treating Sam so thoughtlessly, but he knew he couldn’t say a thing. “Who else have you heard from?” Andy asked.

“Oh you know, Mum and Dad, Jules, two from Soph, a couple of mates. How about you?”

“Parents.”

“Never mind, Prof.”

Andy stiffened and looked back at the letters in his hand. He turned and called out the next name in the stack.

A little while later Andy found a shady spot up against a wall and pulled out the letter from his mum. His older brother, Simon, had got engaged to a girl called Helen from some rich family in London and they were going there to meet them in a couple of weeks’ time. - Andy remembered the day he had told his parents he was getting married. For once he had done something right and everyone seemed happy… for a while. – But back to the present: Simon’s business was thriving and he had just bought a new Audi to drive around town. His dad was apparently fine and the garden was looking lovely. Great. He put the letter back in his pocket and felt Sam’s letter lying there.

After lunch it was his turn to go on watch. He manned the lookout post with his binoculars trained on the tree line. His men were in position, covering all sides of the compound.

Privacy wasn’t a word synonymous with army life and the letter languished in his pocket for a few days. Eventually it was rescued from being ruined by being washed and hidden away in Andy’s box of personal things. Finally, Andy decided he had to take a chance and write to Sam. But what was he to say? How could he write a letter without hurting her feelings? It took him a few days of racking his brains before he came up with an idea.

April arrived and with it, at last, a letter from Afghanistan. Sam got home from work and her mother greeted her, smiling from ear to ear. She pulled out a blue envelope from behind her back and Sam’s eyes lit up. “He wrote!”

Mrs Litton handed her the letter. “Go on. Go up and read it. I’ll have a cup of tea ready for when you get downstairs again.”

Sam hung her coat and helmet on the rack behind the door and skipped off upstairs, excited to finally be hearing news back from Dean. Humphrey followed her up the stairs, barking eagerly. He panted and wagged his tail at her feet as she sat on her bed carefully opening the folded envelope. He barked loudly and got the attention he desired. “Come up, Humph,” she said and patted the bed. Humphrey hopped up on to the bed beside her and rested his head on her lap. “It’s Dean,” she told him. “Let’s see what he has to say after all this time.”

Sam started to read and then checked the name at the bottom of the letter. She was confused. She checked a second time and then began to read again from the beginning. When she had finished she was at a loss as to what to make of it. She stared at the wall for a few minutes, trying to work through her thoughts. Eventually, she got up and took the letter downstairs. Humphrey seemed happier to stay where he was.

Sam found her mum in the living room, with the biscuit barrel open and a hot cup of tea waiting on the little table beside the settee. Sam walked over to her mother and handed her the letter. “What do you make of this?” she asked and took a seat by the cup of tea.

Mrs Litton’s brow furrowed in concern. She put down her cup of tea, reached for her glasses and started to read.

Dear Sam,

I know you will have been expecting a letter from Dean. Please do not concern yourself, he is quite well, but he has been moved with a small team of men to a rather remote checkpoint and therefore will unfortunately be unable to send or receive post for the duration of his time here. I know this must be hard for you and I wondered if you would care to write to me instead. I can keep you informed about how things are for us out here and maybe you would feel more connected in that way.

I will, of course, understand if you would rather not, but on my part, I would be honoured if you would write to me. It is always good to hear from home and how things are going back there. And to hear the song of a nightingale would be a cool relief in the blistering heat of an Afghan day.

Yours faithfully,

Andy Garrington

Mrs Litton looked down at the address on the back of the envelope. “Sergeant?” she said. She lay the letter down in her lap and looked at Sam. She took a deep breath and said nothing.

“I know,” Sam said. She had no idea what to think, or even how to feel. On the one hand she felt abandoned, foisted off onto the next available soldier as if one was just as good as the next. On the other hand, did that mean that Dean was in far more danger? He couldn’t write to her at all? Sam racked her brain for an explanation. Keeping in touch had never been Dean’s forte, it was true, but…

It occurred to her then that she may have just been dumped. Was this how soldiers did it? Passed you on to the next guy? How was she meant to feel about that? She liked Dean: he was charming and handsome and he made her laugh- but he was very unpredictable and definitely not reliable. But she did like him, a lot. If she’d known some of the other wives and girlfriends at the barracks, or The Patch, as they called it, she might be able to get some answers, but Dean never took her there, not once. Army life was still a foreign language to her. At least she could be pretty sure whatever he was doing, he wasn’t cheating on her.

“Do you know this Andy Garrington?” her mum asked.

“Sort of. I met him a couple of times with Dean.”

“What sort of chap is he? Is he nice?”

“Mum!”

“Not like that. I mean kind, considerate, that sort of thing, or was he, you know, laddish?”

“No, he seemed nice, quite quiet. Do you think he’s dumping me?”

“Who, Andy?”

“No, Dean.”

“I don’t think you could say that, not without something more… direct. But it’s strange, I’ll give you that. What are you going to do?”

Sam walked over and took back the letter. She shook her head. “I don’t know. It feels wrong to write to someone else, like I’m being unfaithful or something.”

“Yes, I can see that, but maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. This chap… Andy might not have anyone else to write to. You two could be like pen pals.”

“But what would I say to him?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Talk to him about your day, what the weather is doing, just pretend he’s another girl. It probably doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s the receiving of a letter, when somebody’s taken the time to write to you, that’s the special bit, not what they’ve actually written.”