The Origins of Poppies

Prologue

Repatriation

June 2009, RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire

The repatriation party is assembled in the welfare office, and the rain beats a farewell drum on the corrugated prefab roof. Eliza's coat is soaked through, and her black woollen sweater clings to her like a dead sheep to a hillside. The leaden clouds obscure until the final moment, the Hercules descending from Hell, as the water sheers off the fuselage of the soldiers' tomb. Vapours of grief and aviation fuel hang in the air.

Eliza stands apart from the waiting others, she wishes she were invisible, but her discomfort is transparent. She has no place at this ceremony of brutal unhusbanding, yet the Army has ordered that she must be here, and Jack, too, insists it's her duty.

The Families' Room at RAF Lyneham is stark with Army-issue furniture in a miserable orange teak. Bruised steel filing cabinets line the walls, and someone, probably a welfare clerk, has placed some faded silk flowers in a chipped jug in an attempt to humanise the military machine, part of some policy directive written by the soul-less in Whitehall.

She stares at the ambush of widows across the room. Her friend Jenny stands amongst them, her dark head bent, her lank hair falling into her eyes, and her arms wrapped tightly around her usually frenetic, wiry body. Now she's ominously still. She's wearing Kev's army ski fleece; the sleeves are too long and hang over her hands. Her jeans have dirty patches on the knees, and the lace of one of her red Converse trainers, a trademark of Jenny's energy and light, gapes open and trails across the floor.

Kev was blown up in Babaji on Thursday when one son was learning his letters and sounds, and the smallest was learning to eat solids in his highchair. The pieces of Kev's body are coming home in a bag.

"You can't be friends with other ranks wives," Jack had told Eliza back on that first day the two women had met.

"It's just not done, Lize." Jack had been resolute, but so had Eliza.

She'd been at the baby weigh-in clinic, a three-month Sylvie pink and swaddled like a healthy piglet, at the post-natal clinic near the supermarket in town. Eliza had been immediately struck by Jenny's vitality and the thrum of energy around her.

Eliza had ignored Jack, and Jenny had become her only friend on that south of England camp, her first posting as an army wife.

She doesn't try to catch Jenny's eye or approach her now. Neither of them will be able to stomach the required platitudes. Instead, Eliza focuses on the comforting pain in the burning balls of her feet due to the pinching black heels she only wears for mess balls and funerals. She watches the damp seep through the carpet, foaming at the edges with fragile rainbow bubbles.

Jack stands taut with respect, arms straight as bayonets, and his fingers curled into dutiful fists. He doesn't look at her or at the widows, and she knows that in his mind, even a shard of emotion, an expression of his sympathy would render him complicit.

After seven months of patrolling the green zone of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, six men of B Company are coming home two weeks early and a lifetime too soon. They'd had two short weeks of R&R, coming home with the fine sand of the Dasht-e Margo, a desert of solonchaks and takirs spilling out of their desert combats, an old-fashioned egg timer on their kitchen floors. Homecoming banners have already been made, and dyed bedsheets are covered in glitter.

Welcome Home from Afghanistan, Daddy.

A beautiful and terrible thing.

Eliza is startled by a leather-gloved hand which appears on her shoulder, urgently tapping her into focus.

"It's time, ma'am," a young officer says to her in the clipped tones they all use, his bubble-gum face too close to hers. It's a command rather than a request, the grave formality of this day a perverse thrill to him, a validation of his years of training, duty, and calling.

"Don't tap me, Andy. I know what I'm expected to do, thanks." Eliza shrugs his fingers from her arm, turning her face away from him, making no move to follow him or do as he says. He’s a prick, always too keen to impress Jack, too smarmy at mess functions, tipping over into smarmy obsequiousness and bending over backwards to find ways up the greasy promotion pole. His name’s Alfie, but Eliza calls him Andy, every time she talks to him. A small act of rebellion because she knows it winds him up.

She doesn't know what she's expected to do, but today of all days, she has no appetite for being corralled by some elastic faced Sub-Lieutenant. She doesn't want to be rude but, incarcerated in this hut, imprisoned by this day, she has nowhere to go with her feelings, and she's so utterly sick of it all. He struts back to Jack, his superior officer, his thick short thighs rubbing the tweed of his No 1’s together, but his glove persists with the pointing, and it’s time to mobilise towards the runway, where union flag-covered coffins will soon be unloaded from the Herc. Jack's expression is glacial. He checks his watch and scans the clouds west of the building. He's bareheaded as protocol dictates and pauses, allowing the women and their assigned visiting officers to filter through the steel doors ahead of him, their black umbrellas puncturing the grey landscape.

The bearer party officers leap to attention through the open door at the side of the runway. A young solider is holding a bugle; he can’t be more than about eighteen, his acne is inflamed, and Eliza can see the scabs where he’s picked it. She worries he might pass out as he sways on his heels, back and forth, gaining dangerous momentum like a metronome.

As Jenny prepares to make her way outside, Eliza, without thinking, leaps forward and grabs her hand. She squeezes it, and their fingers interlace intimate and yet somehow grotesque gesture of togetherness. Something passes between them - an acknowledgement of the sacrifice, Jenny's loss and their years of subjugation and pain at the hands of the military machine. Then Jenny is ushered forward by Jack, and Eliza is forced to release her grip on Jenny. The bugle sounds in a false start and a screech of air.

Eliza has never despised Jack more than at this moment.

Jack stands outside the prefab, his fingers drumming the open door impatiently.

"Come on, hurry up." He beckons Eliza towards him. Her reticence smacks of insubordination.

"No," she says simply, "I won't."

She's weary of being his strength and stay, doing as she's told in a false show of solidarity and duty. She's tired of putting the needs of the service first in the mantra of their marriage. Jack reddens and beckons again. The gesture has become more peevish and aggravated, as he can't raise his voice to her in front of his soldiers. His face darkens, and she knows she'll pay for this later. He lets the door slam behind him as he marches towards his soldiers. The repatriation is underway, and the wails of the wind and the women are a siren's shriek through the asbestos walls.

Eliza stands alone now as the door slams shut and trembles on its hinges. She puts her headphones in and turns the music up loud until it devours her.

*

Chapter 1

The World of After

April 2001, Edinburgh

Eliza has returned to Edinburgh after fifteen years of London's bright lights and burdensome beauty. Her hometown and its changing skies, sudden vistas and the smell of the malty sea has always had the power to heal.

She burns up her paltry savings on the deposit for a small light flat on the top floor of a Georgian tenement. She buys an old leather armchair from the junk shop round the corner and shoehorns it into the narrow bay of her bedroom window. She's on the fourth floor, which looks out across the Craigleith sandstone and the hex brown rooftops. For the first time in years, Eliza is at ease with herself, wrapped in an old crochet blanket; her view is perfectly obscured by the high branches of the billowing cherry blossom from the trees of the tiny walled garden planted into the cobbles below. The orchard blooms late, its perfume heavy with hope. Still, she has no regrets about her old life, her burnt-out corporate self and the identikit lovers she's left behind. She shares her life with Cynthia, her ageing rescue cat. They share cold boiled eggs and all-night electric blankets on low and listen to Radio Four until the shipping forecast bids them goodnight, warning of gales in Fair Isle and Viking. She feels content in her bed, deep within the fog-wrapped evenings of a reluctant Spring.

Eliza is in no rush to fire-start her career again, preferring the pace of this capital city to the last. She takes a job in the West End as a media manager in Drummonds, a small firm of solicitors where the pace is slow and hypnotic, and the employees down tools in daily collegiate togetherness for mid-morning tea and shortbread biscuits. She spends her days writing soporific press releases for the local news, drafting statements for the partners and framing their views on minor technical changes to the law and order of the City.

Her Saturdays are occupied with trips to art galleries and street food safaris; her favourite local delicacy is an oatmeal pudding deep fried and drenched in runny brown vinegar sauce. She buys novels from a labyrinthic bookshop in the Cowgate and trudges down Leith Walk to the real pubs with steam-dripped windows. She stops periodically to inhale the beauty of the Old Town and the sea, cold as a witch's breath and embraces the thrill of being alone. She has a few friends, but only a few. She visits the cinema or Rick's Bar for Martini Thursdays with them. Their relations are uncomplicated; they meet and drink and eat; sometimes, there's a guy in a bar, and they fuck and exchange numbers, but they don't call. But nothing sticks, and she doesn't want it to.

After a year of this untethered existence, Jack marches into her life as a keynote speaker at a seminar she has to attend for work.

She's doodling in the agenda section of her Filofax when he takes the stage to present.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen; thank you for being here today."

Eliza looks up. The boom in his voice startles her. She stops doodling, the hungover lines of her pen merging and swirling. The room is silent, waiting for the pin to drop, and all eyes focus on the military uniform standing on the platform. The man at the podium is broad-shouldered, an action man. His chestnut hair is swept back from his olive skin. The sleeves of his uniform shirt are folded back, exposing the dark hairs on his forearms. A pen is entwined between his middle and forefinger; he pauses and twirls it like a magic wand, releasing secrets and truths, or lies, to the audience. The movement is hypnotic. He's got the room.

He's not her type, Eliza thinks, appraising him out of habit rather than desire. He's too obvious, with his square jaw and arms folded across his chest, legs planted firmly apart. His confidence radiates outwards, carried by his charismatic, uncomplicated manner, broad smile, and easy laugh. His voice soothes, rather than excites her for the next thirty minutes, and she absorbs nothing of what he says, the sound of him proving to be more of a lullaby than a call to action.

He finishes his set on How to be a leader of men (and women) and still be 'Nice' and spies the empty seat beside Eliza. It doesn't take him long to realise that the woman in the seat beside him is nauseous and irritable. He winks at her when she groans, her head thumping as she exhales Martini fumes from every pore, and rummages in his rucksack and presents her with a sweaty clingfilm package containing a doorstep sandwich.

"Take this," he says firmly, "You'll feel better if you eat something."

"Thank you, honestly, no, it's OK, I'm fine.” Her voice is rude and she’s irritated by this smooth prick in a uniform. Jack smiles good-naturedly and, ignoring the tremble in her hands, passes her the yellowing plastic cup from the top of his small thermos of coffee to wash down the sandwich. He grins at her, pleased for some reason, and something shifts in Eliza. He's regimented and too public school for her; he's not her type, but his kindness is unexpected, so she takes the cup and gulps back the scalding liquid.

At lunchtime, Jack escorts Eliza to Princes Street under the guise of fresh air. They find an empty bench, easier now that the summer is over, and the afternoons are darkening. Eliza shivers with cold and the residue of the hangover and Jack strides off to buy more caffeine from an up-cycled police box on the edge of the park. The metal segs on his brogues click in time to the trains clanking and clacking into Waverly Station at the foot of the gardens. The wind is whipping up an urban cyclone, swooping and dipping and scooping up fag buts and sweetie wrappers in a squall from the squalor of the pavements.

Eliza feels a pang of unease in her stomach but pushes it away in the spirit of new beginnings.

Jack is steady. Steady is good.

*

A few weeks later, a warm September is the fag end of a summer glittering on the breeze. Eliza is on l dishwasher rota in the staff kitchen at Drummonds. She stacks coffee cups in neat reels and the monolithic TV in the corner of the room is muted. Eliza glances at it occasionally, there’s a segment about a Highland garden, until a red news alert snakes along the bottom of the screen, interrupting the benevolence of programme.

She straightens up.

Something about the holographic images punctures her skin, and small globes of electric fear erupt across her arms.

At first, Eliza can’t process the images, the screeds of grotesque white ticker tape are floating from a laundry-blue sky. Smoke is belching from a screaming mouth in a concrete skyscraper. Ash, time, and space fall to the sidewalks below as people run and stare, eyes protruding in terror as American Airlines Flight 11 flies into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.

"FUCK!" shouts Hamish, her boss, who's prone on the staffroom sofa, pretending to read The Law Society Journal, but who is leafing through a copy of Maxim.

"Turn it up. Turn it up, NOW."

Hamish leaps into a sitting position, and Eliza runs to the TV, pressing the volume button to the max. One of the partners appears in the doorway, poised to complain about the noise they’re making.

"Christ Almighty," he mutters, and Agnes, one of the tea ladies, pushes past him into the room sinking onto the arm of the sofa next to Hamish.

All eyes are fixed on the screen.

Agnes’ son Graham has been working in Foreign Exchange in New York for the past year.

"Agnes?" Eliza places her hand on the woman's arm, and she flinches as though she's touched a hot stove.

"Is he in the Trade Centre, your Graham?"

The older woman nods, barely acknowledging Eliza, her eyes fixed on the TV. She's worked at Drummonds for years, making and serving tea to the partners and their clients. She’s the office mother and keeps emergency tissues and lipsticks, tampons and headache tablets in her locker for the staff of Drummonds, who seek her out daily for comfort. The inside door of her locker has a photo of 13-year-old Graham stuck to it. His school tie is fat and lob-sided, his grinning face brimming with mischief and barely suppressed hilarity. Graham is the light of her life, and she’d brought him up alone since he was three, after her husband died when his fishing boat sank in the North Sea.

"It's OK, hen, he's in the other tower; I just got a wee text from him; he's OK.” but Agnes' voice, usually so strong and capable, is tremulous.

The people of New York stand like petrified trees, faces turned upwards to the treacherous blue sky. Others run and scream, hampered by a roaring tide of rubble and ash, holding their jackets and bags to their faces and heads. One woman stands stock-still, her white face covered in a film of embers, her shoes in her hands. Shock and dust are etched into the lines on her face. A man, skin burnt magenta, drags her alongside him, hauling at the jacket at the back of her neck, pulling them to cover under a school bus.

The news anchors struggle to find the words, talking over one another and trying to articulate the conflicting messages in their earpieces. A Cessna has flown off course. Someone is talking about The Pentagon. Some amateur light aircraft pilot crashed into the behemoth home of the New York power brokers. It's just an accident. A terrible accident, isn't it?

Everyone in Drummonds is crammed into the staff room when 17 minutes later, a second plane, an airliner, is flown with the deliberation of jihad into the South tower. Aside from sharp and rapid breaths, the staff room is silent. Desks are deserted, the phones have stopped ringing, and the buses outside the windows have rumbled to a halt. The whole of the City, the whole of the world, is crammed around a tiny screen.

The grills of the concrete windows explode, cardboard now, and shards of glass glitter and fall. Eliza can't hear what the journalists are saying. The TV's volume is deafening, and the room is filled with the delayed roar of the blast and a palpable sense of panic and fear. American voices scream in a terrible choir. Charred papers float from 110 floors like messengers from the world of Before. The plumes of smoke signal a noxious black dawn.

Something alien and desperate is plummeting downwards, fast. More of the things dive behind it, and then Eliza sees that they are people, who are descending, head down with the glass and the paper, and the debris of their office lives. Figures in windows a thousand feet up, dropping into the air of the New York morning, the only escape from the inferno of aircraft fuel. Suit jackets flap like the scorched feathers of crows in the trembling air.

Life changes fast and in an instant. You start to make tea, and the moment it takes for the water to boil, life ends as you know it. Eliza can't begin to understand how today's events will change her life for years to come, although something tells her that even as she watches this terrible day unfold, they're all now living in The After.

*