War Torn

VICKY WENT TO NURSERY FOR TWO HOURS ON A WEDNESDAY AND Jenny had a list as long as her arm of things to do in that two hours. But she had no sooner got home in the empty car and begun to tackle her chores than the doorbell rang.She sighed. It might be Leanne, armed with a twin on each side, saying she needed to talk. She had to talk to someone, poor love, since they still hadn’t let her talk to Steve.But it was Agnieszka. Luke was in his pushchair throwing his arms up and down in that strange way of his and Agnieszka stood there, white-faced, tight-jeaned, barely smiling. Jenny felt resentful until she reminded herself that, in the superstore, she had actually invited her.‘Come in!’ she said. ‘And just don’t look at the mess.’‘I don’t see any mess,’ said Agnieszka. Although there was plenty.Agnieszka left the buggy on the doorstep and carried Luke into the house. She sat stiffly, holding Luke, while Jenny made coffee. She didn’t want any herself. The very smell of it revolted her at this stage of her pregnancy.‘We’ve got some baby toys Luke might like to play with . . .’Jenny dragged herself upstairs to the box under Vicky’s bed. She selected so many toys that she could not see the steps properly when she came back down and three from the bottom she tripped. She lurched forward, losing her balance, pulled by gravity and her own unaccustomed bodyweight towards the floor. She saved herself by grabbing the banister just in time. The toys thudded down the stairs as she swung there. She felt so much like a big baboon that she wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.Carefully she disengaged herself from the rail and her feet found the ground. She picked up the toys and went back into the living room where Agnieszka was drinking her coffee. Luke did not need the baby toys. He was lying on the sofa across his mother, falling asleep.‘Have you heard from Jamie?’ Jenny asked brightly as she sat down.‘He try to phone every day.’ Agnieszka could have no idea of the minefield she was crossing.‘Every day!’ Jenny attempted to keep her voice even. Her heart was still thumping from her near-fall on the stairs; Agnieszka’s words made it beat harder still. ‘How does he manage to call so often?’‘He not always manage. Sometimes three whole days without one word. But he buy other men’s minutes.’The thought that Dave might sell his minutes so that other men could call their wives made Jenny feel as though her body was made up of thin tubes, all of them hollow. Then, just as quickly as they had hollowed, the tubes filled with anger. But she remembered that, as sergeant, Dave would not be playing the system. Her anger abated. He would not sell his minutes. Although her Dave would certainly give them away to a man in need. She felt another surge of anger. He would give them away, forgetting that his own wife had needs too.‘That your father?’ Agnieszka, pinned to the sofa by the sleeping Luke, gestured to a picture.Jenny put aside her thoughts of phone minutes and heaved herself up to fetch it from the shelf. She grabbed a wedding picture too.‘Yep, this is my dad.’ She handed the first frame to Agnieszka. ‘He died when I was ten. This is the only good photo I have of him.’Agnieszka studied the picture carefully. ‘Where live your mother?’‘My mum lives in south London, about a mile from Dave’s mum. Isn’t that strange? They’ve become mates since we introduced them. Although Dave and I grew up in the same area we didn’t know each other then. And we went to different schools.’‘So how you meet?’‘Windsurfing.’ Jenny laughed. ‘I moved down to the south coast with a boyfriend and when we split up I stayed there because I was enjoying the windsurfing so much and I had quite a nice job. And one day Dave showed up. We met wearing wetsuits! Then we arranged to meet with our clothes on and we didn’t recognize each other. But one thing led to another . . .’ She held out the wedding photo.Agnieszka took it. ‘You look beautiful.’Jenny smiled. She knew she did look good in that picture. Tall, slim, her hair swept back and her makeup perfect but, most of all, she looked genuinely full of joy. And Dave wasn’t one of those awkward grooms. He looked like a man who had found the right woman and knew it.‘You marry in London?’‘No, here.’‘Dave already in army when you meet?’Jenny was still smiling. It was good to remember those times. The first tentative dates, the feeling that she had met someone really special, then the knowledge that he was not just special but significant for her and finally the understanding that she wanted him to stay significant for ever. There had only ever been one problem. The bloody army.Her smile faded.‘Yeah. It was the only thing I didn’t like about him.’Except that all the things which made him a good sergeant also happened to make him an attractive man. He was tough and fair, compassionate without being soft, reliably strong and a man who could take responsibility. Jenny loved him for all those things. So did the army.‘Why you not like army?’ asked Agnieszka. ‘Lots of men looking for work but our boys got safe jobs.’‘Safe?’ Jenny gave an empty smile. ‘Safe? Try telling Leanne that.’‘Yeah, yeah, but you know what I mean. We got somewhere to live, we got our house.’Jenny glanced around her. Actually, there were days when she hated the small, nondescript box with its magnolia walls. She occasionally had inspired ideas about turning it into something more. But she was always defeated by the cost or the practicalities or the endless regulations.‘If you just see some apartments in Poland . . .’ Agnieszka said quietly. ‘If you just see some places where people live and think they very lucky. Then maybe you understand this not such a bad place.’Jenny felt ashamed. Agnieszka, of course, was right. If you compared it to a lot of other homes in the world, or in the UK, then of course army housing was good. Only when you compared it to your friends’ houses did you feel despair at the mould, the flooding, the malfunctioning drains, the insipid design and the sameness of it all.She asked Agnieszka about herself and how she had met Jamie and Agnieszka told her Jamie had been a university student working in a hotel during the vacation and she had been a barmaid at the same hotel. She had done nothing to dissuade Jamie from walking out on his education and joining the army: she could see it was what he really wanted. But his parents had associated her arrival in his life with his decision to leave university. They had tried desperately to persuade him to wait until he had a degree so that at least he could go to Sandhurst. But Jamie had not wanted to be an officer.‘So they blamed you?’‘Yes, they blame me. They live in big house. They invite us for weekend and make me sleep in another room from Jamie. They say: Agnieszka, try to make him change his mind! And I say: Mr, Mrs Dermott, his mind made and Jamie very stubborn. After this they don’t like me. Not before wedding, not at wedding, not after wedding.’‘They must love Luke . . .’Agnieszka shook her head.‘Luke disappoint them very much.’They both looked at Luke. There was a sweetness about him which Jenny loved but something was not right, you could see it even as he slept. The shape of his head or the way it lay at such a strange angle, as though he was trying to escape from himself.‘What does the doctor say?’Agnieszka’s face had closed itself into a discontented pout as she talked about her in-laws. As she talked about Luke’s doctors, the pout didn’t disappear.‘Tests, tests, more tests and then they say it too early to tell.’‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny said gently. ‘It’ll be easier for you when you have a diagnosis. When you know what’s wrong, you’ll know what to do.’She felt her own baby kicking and longed for the day she could cradle him in her arms and know he was safe and well. She held her bump with the same tenderness with which she would soon be holding the baby.‘I just want to know!’ said Agnieszka and there were tears in her voice.Jenny felt her own throat constrict. How often, she thought, does Agnieszka cry alone? How often do we all? She remembered the sight of Agnieszka, alone, in the café. In a sudden rush of affection, Jenny said: ‘Listen, next time you feel like a cup of tea at the superstore, tell me and I’ll come with you.’Agnieszka’s face lit up. ‘Thank you.’And then Jenny remembered that Agnieszka hadn’t, in fact, been alone. She’d been with a man. A thought crossed her mind. It was fleeting but it left a small bruise behind. Had Agnieszka come today for some sort of reassurance that Jenny hadn’t seen the man: was it this reassurance which had triggered that radiant smile?Luke was waking up now.He opened his eyes and looked around and in an instant stepped from sleep’s quiet bliss into an outpouring of misery. His mouth opened so wide it seemed to be swallowing up his face. He could barely breathe he was yelling so hard. The room was filled with his roar. His arms and legs waved.Agnieszka had placed the photos on the arm of the sofa. Jenny tried but failed to leap up in time to rescue them from Luke’s flailing hands. By the time she had lumbered over, it was too late. They fell to the floor, smashing against each other. Jenny’s father’s smile was jammed against his daughter’s wedding. Splinters of glass lay across the carpet. One frame was dented.As Jenny bent to rescue the pictures, she saw that her father’s forehead had been cut. She stared at the gash, half expecting it to bleed.It was impossible to say or do anything while the storm went on. She looked at Agnieszka, sitting passive and expressionless in the face of Luke’s fury, waiting for it to end. How could a mother watch so silently and do nothing to calm him? Jenny told herself that Agnieszka had probably tried many times. But still she had to resist the urge to pick up the baby herself.Agnieszka saw the broken pictures but made no attempt to apologize. She seemed unmoved by the damage to the only picture of Jenny’s father.Jenny looked anxiously at the clock.‘I have to pick Vicky up from nursery!’ she called over the noise. ‘Do you want to stay here?’Agnieszka was rooted to the spot while Luke screamed. She said she’d leave when she could. She’d pull the door shut behind her.‘Mind the glass on the floor!’ Jenny left Agnieszka on the sofa with the roaring baby, a small pile of glass splinters at her side, the broken photos on the sideboard. She tried not to think of all the things she had promised herself she’d do this morning.