My Darling Lilly
Today is your 7th birthday and I should be with you but I am not. I am here in Germany, fighting and hoping the war will end soon so that I can come home to you and your Mum, my beloved Gillian. You wont understand all this now but perhaps in years to come you will, and forgive me for not being there to share your special day.
As we have fought our way from Normandy to Germany we have seen, everywhere, columns of people, dispossessed, hungry, homeless, fleeing from the fighting or their own authorities, desperate to find a safe haven. Thousandssaw upon thousands walking, following the leader of the line who probably has no idea where he is going. It breaks my heart and I curse the politicians who sit in their comfortable offices and condemn ordinary people to such misery.
(This is an extract from a letter that was sent from a post a few miles from Berlin and was written by my great grandfather, Eric, to my grandmother, Lilly. Eric was killed two days later.)
~
I discovered the letter when we were clearing out my grandmother's home after she died. It was the inspiration of my life. I determined to do all I could for those nameless, but countless people he had seen or, if not for them, then for their modern equivalents. I studied Logistics at university and, by the time I was 26 I was working on my first overseas posting.
~
Mel looked at me over the remnants of our coffee and croissant breakfast.
"Look, love, I cant do this anymore."
"This what?"
"Sitting around here at home, waiting for you to come home, scared for you."
Mel was a paramedic and we had met when I was training to be one too. I gave it up to be a relief worker and, consequently, spent a lot of time in far-flung, benighted places, trying to bring some help to the refugees in flight from terrorists, mad despots, war zones and natural disasters. My job was to be a member of the advance team, getting on scene quickly, establishing comms and permissions and god alone knew what and then organising the development of the aid from then on before handing over to a management team and either going home or onto the next fucking disaster.
I understood how Mel felt. I'd just got back from a three month deployment during which I had been able to email her occasionally but only to speak to her twice. My homecoming usually involved a frantic fuckathon but not this time. She was almost cold and sad. I think I knew in those first few days after my return that it was the end but it's hard to be honest, hard not to feel that she should understand. But why should she? Did I understand her. Did I really ever think about her. I'd often, it is true, lie in some temporary bed and unzip my trousers and slip my hand into my knickers and wish it was her hand. But did I miss her? Was I so self-absorbed that I didn't think of her as being alone and missing me. She was comfortable and could have a shower whenever she wanted one. She could have a meal that was not disgusting. I was the one making all the sacrifices. But, of course, I wasn't.
She didn't need to say anymore. I totally got it. It was unfair to expect her to wait, to do her incredibly demanding job, physically and emotionally, and not have someone to caress her hair and kiss her better after a road accident or a child's death.
When I had moved in with her I had let out my own flat to a teacher called Naomi Preston. I'd done it through an agency and had never met her but i decided to give her a call and fix to explain why I needed her to move out.
The teacher was surprised when I phoned. "I've only dealt with your agents. Sure, come round this evening if you'd like to."
I got there at 6. When she opened the door, I said, "Hi. I"m Carly Weston, we spoke earlier."
"Yes, sure. Come on in."
She was a stereotype of a teacher. She was wearing a grey skirt, a white, high-necked blouse with a grey cardigan over it. She wore blue tights which I loathe. She had no shoes on. Her brown hair was tied severely back and she wore black, round glasses that seemed too big for her face.
She showed me into her/my kitchen which seemed bigger, and definitely cleaner, than when I had moved out. She made tea and we sat at the island in the kitchen and I started.
"Naomi, I wanted to speak to you face to face. I need to move out of my girlfriend's flat, we're splitting up."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, that must be hard for you both." She must have seen the implications for her but seemed to put me and Mel first. "You'll be wanting me to move out of here then?"
"That's one option but I have another suggestion. It might not appeal and, if it doesn't, I will understand but let me explain?"
I told her about my work, the protracted periods away. I said that, maybe, she'd consider taking me in as a sort of lodger myself. She could still have the main bedroom and I'd keep out of her way as much as possible. At least that way she could look for alternative accommodation in her own time and I could move out of Mel's place quickly. Alternatively, I'd rent somewhere as soon as I could to give her time to find somewhere.
"Your work sounds fascinating, tell me more."
So I did and she said she was impressed, then she told me about her job as a teacher of chemistry in an all girls private school which sounded very much like the gulag I had attended. The chat was unnecessary except that it gave her time to consider my suggestion.
And so it was that for the first time in my adult life I began sharing a flat with a straight woman. It didn't take long for us to become good friends. It seemed to me that the lack of any sexual complication meant we cold just relax and be natural with each other which worked well. It took me a while to remember to put a dressing gown on before leaving my room, to close the toilet door and other little things that come with a sexual partner but not, definitely not with straight female lodger.
It was three months before my next deployment. I'd been working almost normal hours in the charity's headquarters, providing back up to others in the field when my boss called me in.
"We're getting reports of serious weather in the West Indies, you'll have seen them." I had. "We want to get a unit out there so when the shit hits the fan we can deploy really quickly. It'll be hairy; flooding, wind damage, the whole nine yards including looting and probably civil disobedience. If you don't fancy it just say. You've done your share." He watched my reaction.
He's a clever, thoughtful man and once told me that when he offered someone a task, he watched their body language. Were they afraid of saying no, afraid of the job but denying it to themselves, too hungry to put themselves in the way of danger. I was aware of myself because of his words.
"I'll get on to the arrangers and get my tickets et cet. They'll give me all the contacts?"
They would. And so here we go again. Another few thousand dispossessed, injured, dead, homeless but, at least, this was a natural disaster in the making and not some mad bastard with barrel bombs and poison gas for his own population.
The night before I was leaving, I checked over my 'always' kit. It's a large bergen with essentials that sits always in the corner of my room like a sentinel and a warning, and which I check once a week to make sure nothing is out of date or leaking or whatever. Naomi came home to find me with the contents spread across the sitting room floor and, overcoat and shoes removed, she squatted beside me to help.
That night, I'd got into bed when there was a tap on my door. She came in, in black pyjamas and, wordlessly, climbed into bed beside me.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm giving my best friend a hug before she goes into the danger zone. Straight girls can cuddle girls too you know. Not just you dykes. Budge up a bit."
She was still there in the morning when my alarm went off and, I swear, there was a tear in her eye when I kissed her goodbye.
~
The Caribbean doesn't look as good in the hurricane season as it does in the travel brochures. Two days after arriving and I'd moved from the tent I had first used into a slightly more permanent structure just a few hours before the real trouble started. Our camp was on the periphery of the worst hit zone so we weren't in much danger but we lost all comms, any loose tents and a few vehicles to falling trees and flooding.
Then the work really began and I barely slept for the next two weeks, as we strove to get aid to the worst affected, gradually moving from camp to camp. At last I found some time to take a bit of ease. The weather had improved but the effort was still demanding as all sorts of agencies tried to get on with reconstruction, particularly hospitals and schools as well as the houses, such as they were, of the poorer people.
At last it ended and I was able to return to base, only to discover i had a new roommate. I could care less? I hit my bed and slept the sleep of the dead.
Sandia was a Swiss paralegal who was helping the poor devils who had lost identity papers, passports or who wanted to apply for asylum somewhere. She was blonde, rather short and slightly dumpy. She was also incredibly and unaccountably sexy. And, what's more, she knew it.
"Hey. You're Carly, right?" Bleary-eyed, I confirmed I was. "I brought you coffee. You snore." She said this with a wicked smile.
"I do not."
"Okay, whatever." She told me who she was and we chatted, she sitting on her bed, me drinking the coffee which was surprisingly good. I said so.
"Anyone can be uncomfortable in camp but it takes class to be comfortable. I always reckon good coffee makes everything seem better. You got anyone at home?"
"No. Who'd put up with all the absences. My ex couldn't, anyway."
"No, nor mine. She fucked off with our cleaner, can you believe that?"
