The Girl in the Yellow Dress

Prologue

The girl’s face lit up as she laughed, the green flecks in her eyes glittering in the rays of the setting sun. She raised a dirty hand and pushed an unruly strand of dark hair from her forehead then flashed another smile. The sunflower yellow of her dress contrasted with her tanned limbs and the dun walls of the village. She skipped barefoot in the dirt by the side of the track, her feet seeming to barely touch the ground.

‘Hallo, hallo, chocolate.’ She waved with both hands, pale palms outstretched, until the last vehicle in the column halted in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes. A gloved hand extended from a hatch of the rumbling machine and held out a handful of boiled sweets to the gaggle of children. The girl paused her excited dance, waiting for the soldier's arm to release its treasure. A cascade of brightly coloured wrappers dropped by the metal tracks and the girl darted in and gathered up the treasure. She ran off, shrieking, pursued by a noisy posse who jostled for a share of the booty.

None of the soldiers knew her name. They had asked many times and received a shy smile and a shrug in return, so they called her Hazel, after the colour of her eyes. She was always there, standing outside the mud wall of her family compound with her younger brother, a scrawny child whose nose constantly ran. She left her chores to wave whenever they returned to their base before sunset, her yellow dress shining, a flash of colour, a ray of hope among the dull cruelty that was Helmand.

Chapter 1

He gazed through the streaks where the rain had sluiced away the grime from the carriage window. Like tears through dust, he thought. As the countryside passed in a blur, Guy wondered how many times Alex had taken this journey, staring out at the same fields and hills, the curving ribbons of streams at odds with the stone walls that quartered the land. He leaned his forehead against the glass. It was cold against the skin. A numbness. Alex had chosen the numbness.

Had the pain of that last tour of Afghanistan been warmed for Alex by the tingle of homecoming? Those who left the regiment after that final tour had done so having had their bellyful of adventure. Of death. They had gone their own ways, spinning the threads of new lives, reaching out to wives, families, children. Some succeeding, some failing. Some finding peace. For Guy, anguish. For Alex, suicide. Tears and dust.

Guy had not kept in touch with Alex after the army. ‘After the army’. It was a phrase they used to describe that time after which life, their lives, would assume some state of normality. Different rules. Different worlds. Guy’s and Alex’s friendship was a comradeship, and it did not last after the army. Any closeness they may have had, that bond between men who shared a uniform and the terror of battle, had been quenched by the dead hand of military bureaucracy that had swept in to investigate the aftermath of that day.

On that day, like the other days, they had been frightened men trying to do what was expected of them. They had feared death but were driven by duty. It was something Guy had found hard to explain to civilian friends when he left the army. It was not so much the queen and country type of duty, which civilians always assumed, but more the duty to one’s comrades, to the job, the regiment. When he got the phone call about Alex he knew he had to travel to the funeral. But was he attending to bid an honourable farewell to a brother officer, or was he drawn to say goodbye because they had a shared suffering, a common thread that tied them?

He sat back and wiped the damp patch of condensation from his brow and checked his phone for signs of Julia. There were no messages. He knew her well enough to know what she was thinking; she knew he would be expecting something, and the lack of communication made him feel she was toying with him. Even worse, maybe she just did not care, or was too busy to care. Too busy with thoughts of someone else. Maybe she was moving to her ‘after marriage’ phase. During his rare objective moments he admitted he did not really blame her for wanting a life without him. There were times when he could do without himself as well. But it still made the threat of parting so damn painful. Losing her was another part of him coming apart, a broken ship on a reef with each incoming tide tearing another part of it away. The thought stirred the familiar sadness in his chest, tightening his throat. He did not so much want Julia, as feared being alone. Not now. Not when he felt like this.

The train slowed, the change in tempo distracting him from his anxiety. He peered outside. The rain had stopped, the cloud a lighter shade of grey where it sat on the rounded tops of hills. He watched a road keep pace with the train, snaking between fields to run parallel to the track, then darting away before drifting back. Then a line of slate rooftops, Victorian railway cottages, a platform, station signage. It was time.

He wiped his sleeve down the carriage window and checked his reflection. He still kept his hair short, the need to run his hand through it more out of habit than necessity. The brown eyes which slanted downwards slightly, a family trait his mother used to describe as ‘puppyish’, were more bloodshot than he would have liked. He ran a hand over his close cropped beard, still unsure about the dabs of grey that were appearing on his chin. He stood in a fluid move and pulled down his overnight bag from the luggage rack with an easy strength, straightened his jacket, checked his shoes for marks and trousers for fluff. Old habits. Shirt tucked in. Belly still flat. Just. He ran twice a week, despite the hangovers, a habit from his days in the regiment.

The door slid open, and he stepped down. The staleness of the carriage was washed away as cold air surrounded him, clouding his breath. There was a smell, a freshness, and it held a tang he recognised from early mornings on exercises. The smell of moors and damp earth. That was a long time ago. He pushed the thought aside and gave himself a mental shake. Come on, Guy. That was then and this is now. Things to do.

He was the only passenger to alight so he stood still on the platform. And breathed. He had never been here before, among the Pennine hills and mountains of Northern England; never realised how different this place was to his own gentler countryside of Surrey. He would have liked a cigarette, having not had one since changing trains in Leeds, but he had seen the waiting figure at the end of the platform, so now was not the time. He hefted his bag and stepped out as the train rumbled away. He stopped two paces from the man and put his bag down. It had been a long time, but it also felt like yesterday.

He extended his hand. ‘Mr McGarry. Or, should I say, Jim?’

Jim McGarry smiled softly, all crow’s feet and ruddy cheeks. ‘Mr Peters, sir.’

They laughed and shook hands. Jim McGarry was not a tall man but made up for it in width and presence. He had cropped salt and pepper hair, pale blue eyes and a soldier’s Groucho moustache beneath a broken nose. Guy was aware of the man’s grip and stepped back, shaking his head. ‘I’m not Mr Peters these days. It’s Guy, as you well know.’

‘Old habits, I’m afraid. Which means I’m Jim or anything else you want to call me.’

Guy chuckled. ‘Well, that’ll be a change. If I remember, you had a few choice names for us back in the day.’

‘Well, that was then. We’re all civilians now, so my good lady keeps telling me.’

‘How is Jean?’

Jim shrugged and patted his stomach. ‘Overfeeding me, nagging me to fix the guttering, do the lawn. Usual stuff.’

Guy picked up his bag. ‘And so she should.’

He studied the familiar stride of Jim McGarry as he followed him across the car park. Not quite a swagger but confident. Assured. Jim had been every inch a sergeant major and Guy was relieved when the veteran was assigned to his company in the work-up training before leaving for Afghanistan. Jim had joined the army as a junior soldier at the age of 16 and the regiment’s ethos and traditions ran through his blood. He had served in every recent conflict that Britain had despatched its soldiers to, from the wet streets of Northern Ireland to the dusty villages of Afghanistan. Jim stopped by a gleaming black Range Rover.

He pointed at the car. ‘It looks like retirement suits you.’

‘I don’t mind. Can’t complain. Play bowls in the summer, do a spot of fishing at weekends, the usual family stuff. Grandkids. Try to keep meself busy, fixing things, DIY.’

As Jim opened the boot Guy saw the regimental badge sticker on the rear window. Its once-familiar shape caught him by surprise. For years it had been the totem which governed his life. It had been everywhere; on uniforms, hanging on walls, painted on vehicles, etched on gravestones. He had not realised its absence from his post-army world until now. It looked so foreign and so familiar at the same time. He tilted his chin towards it. ‘See any of the old crowd?’

‘Now and again. There’s a few of us meet up on Remembrance Day in London. We march past the cenotaph, have a few drinks. I get the occasional email. That’s how I heard about Mr Calvert.’ Jim looked down at his polished Oxford brogues. ‘Bad business. Such a shame.’

Guy knew that the former Sergeant Major would only ever call Alex by his formal title of Mr Calvert. In Jim McGarry’s world deceased former officers were not referred to by their first names.

Guy placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder: ‘Alex. Mr Calvert... was a good officer.’ He let the sentiment sink in and added: ‘Do you have any detail, anything on how he died?’

Jim opened the passenger door for him. ‘The lad, Mr Calvert’s son, found him.’ His face softened. ‘Poor little bugger. Fancy seeing your father like that.’ He fiddled with the car keys, a schoolboy struggling with emotion.

‘Go on, Jim.’ Guy said it softly.

The old soldier looked away, then took a breath before returning Guy’s gaze. ‘He hung... hanged himself in some barn on his farm. His son found him.’

Guy felt as though he had been punched. ‘Christ. Bloody hell. Poor kid.’

They stood in silence, each wrestling with the right and wrong response. A gust of wind brought a smattering of fine rain against Guy’s cheek, drops beading on the polished windscreen. They got in. The car smelled of polish.

‘How did? Who told you?’

Jim muttered through gritted teeth: ‘The undertaker. I called about the funeral just in case Mr Calvert’s widow wanted a burial party from the regiment. She didn’t. Undertaker told me it was one of the first things she said she didn’t want.’

Guy had never met Cathy Calvert. She was always the missing wife at formal functions in the officers’ mess. He remembered a quiet night in Helmand in the operations room, thinking and talking of home; Alex showing him a photo of a laughing woman sitting on a tractor, a child on her knee.

‘It’s not the send-off we would have liked to give him, Jim. But you must understand. Some wives blame the army for, well, for what happens to their men. We always saw the regiment as our family. Others see it differently.’

The Range Rover bumped gently across the potholed car park and swung onto a road hemmed by stone walls. Jim nodded at the satnav screen in the dashboard: ‘The funeral service is at a chapel not far from here. Methodists apparently. There’s a do afterwards at the family farm. We’re the only ones here from the regiment.’

‘That’s a shame. He was a popular officer.’

‘I made a few phone calls and got excuses. A lot of the lads still blame Mr Calvert for well, you know... for what happened.’

Chapter 2

The chapel stood alone by the side of a road that rose along the side of a shallow valley. Jim parked at the end of a line of cars in a layby. A wiry sheepdog, blue baling twine tied to its collar, barked at them from the rear of a mud-splattered pickup. There was a cluster of mourners crowding in the wooden porch. Without pausing Jim McGarry edged through, the people parting slowly before him. Guy followed in his wake. The pews were full, so they found a space to stand along the rear wall. The air had the damp odour of buildings that are not used regularly and in places the white paint peeled from the plastered walls. There were two rows of pews either side of a central aisle. The coffin lay on a bier in front of a simple altar with a wooden cross.

Guy realised this was the first time he had been in a Methodist chapel. The plainness of the place spoke of a modesty far from the Church of England interiors he was used to. He could not help but compare its lack of pretension, its simple beams and plain glass, to the grandeur of the Cotswold church in which he had married Julia. He thought of the manicured lawns of her parents’ country house and the wedding marquee, the sides lifted to allow air to circulate and ease the discomfort of the morning suits, dress uniforms and gowns. Those trappings were a world away. A war away.

The hum of conversation stilled when a white-haired man in a baggy suit rose and stood behind a lectern. As his broad Northern vowels rang across the assembly, a tight-lipped woman in a headscarf passed a hymnal to Jim who held it so that Guy could also see it. Guy gave it a cursory glance then began to study the congregation. He wondered how these people had fitted into Alex’s life, each a piece of jigsaw in which a segment was now missing. He could see across the rows to the front pews. The woman in the long coat and felt hat must be Cathy Calvert.

There was a small boy with collar-length hair sitting by her. Next to the boy sat an old man whose white hair still held the parallel tracks of the comb. A grandfather, Guy presumed. The old man stared at the coffin during the service, never turning his head. Guy wondered if the old man was Cathy’s father or Alex’s. Jim had told him that Alex’s mother had died a few years ago. Guy watched the service with detachment, his numbness a blanket, separating him from the grief that Alex Calvert had harnessed when he walked out into a winter evening and hanged himself in a barn yards from his front door.

The congregation stood to sing, and he noted the firm set of Cathy Calvert’s back, her hair falling from beneath the hat to gather at her shoulders. She held her hymnal high in a gloved hand and looked levelly at it, laying her other hand on the shoulder of the boy. He vaguely remembered Alex speaking of his son, but Guy could not remember the boy’s name.

His attention drifted from the words of the psalm, drawn to the familiar re-run of thoughts, a litany of what might have been. Would the bond of children have carried him and Julia through these days or would they have added flotsam to the wreckage of their relationship? They had discussed children in the months after their marriage and she had decided there was plenty of time for a family. He felt those early days belonged to a different couple. It was hard to believe he was once that person: joyous, laughing, giving. It was a time of love and adventure: intense sex, talking of the future, of hoping one day for a boy and a girl; children they would raise in a house in the country. They had agreed to call them Jack and Susan; honest, unpretentious English names.

Despite being an officer’s daughter, Julia had baulked at the idea of bringing her offspring up as ‘patch brats,’ moving from one army house to another as Guy was shunted from posting to posting. Unlike her mother, she wanted a career, preferably in the City and was not going to give it up, as she put it, ‘to traipse around dreary garrison towns drinking gin and tonic with the other regiment wives.’ As far as Julia was concerned, children would have to wait until she and Guy could afford a house in the Surrey commuter belt.

They achieved this by the time he had made the rank of captain and she had a career with a corporate pension provider at Canary Wharf. Things went noticeably sour on his return from his final tour of Afghanistan. The topic of them having a child was raised and dismissed out of hand by Julia.