Package for a loved one

Darren Anderson had always had a crush on Molly Spugden, but there was nothing he could do to win her attention and he had to watch her go out with Barry Hawkins, who worked in the local chip shop.

 

He ended up being sent to the front line in the same platoon as Barry, though the two of them had little to do with each other.

 

When he returned home on leave it was over a year since he’d been called up. He spent the first few days of leave with family and friends, enjoying home cooked food and real beer, but on the third he called round Molly’s house.

 

“I should have called round the first day back,” he told  her, “But I’ve been putting it off. I’m afraid to say Barry’s dead.”

 

“Dead! He can’t be. I had a letter less that a week ago. He’s due back on leave soon.”

 

“I know,” Anderson said, “He told me. But he got caught by a bullet the day before I left. There was nothing anybody could do.”

 

He said no more for a while, and watch Molly cry floods of tears. There’s no dignity in death, not even in receiving news of it.

 

“This is for you,” he said, passing Molly a package, “He was planning to give you this next time he came home on leave. A present.”

 

“What is it?” she asked

 

“I don’t know,” Anderson said, “I never opened it, it was meant for you. Barry was going to give it to you when he came home on leave.”

 

Molly opened the package there and then. It contained chocolate, cigarettes and a packet of condoms.

 

“It might not look very romantic, but we don’t get much chance to buy flowers in the trenches. He must have saved his rations for ages to get all that chocolate and cigarettes.” He subtly failed to mention the condoms.

 

“You might as well help me with the chocolate, I shouldn’t eat all that myself.”

“Are you sure?”

 

“You need it, look at the weight you’ve lost. Don’t they feed you in the army?”

 

“It’s not exactly home cooking,” Anderson admitted.

 

Anderson stayed and talked. They smoked the cigarettes and ate the chocolate. They shared stories about Barry, Anderson sharing as much as he dare about the reality of life in the trenches, Molly opening up about the relationship she’d had. These weren’t the first condoms Barry had given her, apparently.

 

Eventually the chocolate was all gone. A month’s rations in one night.

 

“We might as well open these,” Molly said, gesturing to the condoms.

“Are you sure?”

 

“Well, it’s not as I’ve got any other use for them, not now Barry’s dead. And I know you always wanted to.”

 

Anderson stayed the night with Molly, using two of the condoms during the stay. He never did find out what happened to the third.

 

The next day he headed back to the front. At the main train station he bumped into a fellow soldier, Barry Hawkins, heading in the opposite direction, on his way home on leave.

 

“Did you see Molly while you were home?” Barry asked him.

 

“Molly, no I didn’t. Haven’t seen her for over a year. How’s she doing these days?”