Later that evening, the atmosphere in the spider was exceptionally subdued – and sober. The thought of what was to come the following morning was enough to convert even the hardest drinkers to temporary abstinence. By 9.30pm a good number of the beds were already resonating with snoring heads. I decided it was time to join them. I threw off my shirt and slacks and hit the pillow.
It seemed as if I’d only just begun to drift down into a deep, welcome sleep when something suddenly reversed the direction of my consciousness. In a flash, I was brutally awake and confused. I strained to make sense of what was happening. Some time must have passed since I’d gone to bed. It was dark and very quiet. I lay on my back, completely motionless, my eyes wide up, staring up towards the ceiling. A moment later I heard a groan, followed by the rustle of sheets and a stifled sigh. What the hell’s going on, I thought. As the vague realization began to dawn, I wondered if I was having some weird, tension-induced dream. More sounds, coarse, high-pitched nasal sounds. Then a grunt, an mistakably female grunt; panting, pained almost, gradually rising in pitch, volume and frequency until it peaked in a sharp, drawn-out squeal followed by a sigh of relief.
A wave of sexual excitement rippled up and down my spine. I tilted my head in the direction of the sounds and caught a whiff of cheap perfume. The sweet smell was unmistakable in the heavy male air of the spider. A permed blonde head and glinting earring emerged momentarily from among the tumbling sheets of the next bed. This can’t be happening, I thought, Geordie in bed with a woman. I felt almost dizzy, as if I’d got up too quickly from a prone position. I turned away and onto my back again and spent a few moments deliberately composing myself, reminding myself where I was and what I was doing there.
The groans and sighs began again, more frantic and physical than before. Geordie was like a stag in a rut. I glanced at my watch. It was one o’clock in the morning, my sleep had been broken and in a few hours I had to face Sickener 1, a severe test of physical endurance lasting three days for which I would need every ounce of energy I possessed. Another groan. I turned towards Geordie, anger welling up inside me, and opened my mouth to speak. Nothing. Not a word came out. A feeling of admiration at his sheer nerve combined with a vague acknowledgement that it wasn’t right to interrupt a man’s sexual performance somehow dammed up the wave of anger. The torrents of abuse simply swirled and foamed around inside me.
I put my head beneath the sheets to try to shut out the disturbance, but I knew it was no good. The more I chased sleep, the more it eluded me. I kept telling myself I would drift off at any moment. I began to perspire with the frustration of not being able to sleep. I twisted my body into every position imaginable, trying to relax. I explored every corner of the bed seeking a cool patch in the sheets. Who dares wins, I thought, as Geordie finally fire-crackered into an Olympian climax.
3
Sickener 1
I heard another noise. Oh Christ, I thought, don’t tell me Geordie’s going for another shot. I turned over and half-opened one eye. In the first glimmer of dawn I saw that most of the men in the spider were already awake, either standing up and pulling on their OGs or sitting on their beds lacing up their boots. I sat up instantly. My heart pounded for a few seconds, priming my body to the same level of alertness as my mind. Years of training and discipline came to my rescue. I sprang out of bed, switched my mind on and put my body into automatic pilot. I glanced at my watch: 4.30am. I didn’t even dare contemplate how much sleep I’d finally managed to get, or whether it would be enough to see me through the day.
Within minutes everyone was outside, piling into the six Bedford four-tonners lined up ready to take us to our torture. We set off westwards, then turned north up the A470, following the River Wye towards the Elan Valley, deep in the Cambrian Mountains of midWales. The Elan Valley – that was the first con. It sounded like some mythical green and pleasant land. Well, it might have been green but it certainly wasn’t pleasant, as we were very quickly to discover.
I looked around the twenty bodies being shaken about in the Bedford. There in the corner, hunched over a cigarette, was Geordie. I motioned to the man next to him to change places with me and, with one hand on the side of the swaying truck to keep my balance, made my way up to the front to sit next to him. One or two of the men looked up at me, vaguely puzzled by what was happening, then dropped back down to stare at their boots, mentally steeling themselves for the ordeal ahead.
‘What the hell were you up to last night?’ I asked Geordie, hardly concealing my astonishment.
‘Having a good fuck,’ Geordie replied bluntly.
‘Any chance of having twos-up when we get back?’ enquired Jim, appealing to Geordie’s generosity.
‘You can piss off, she’s mine!’ replied Geordie, in a distinctly ungenerous fashion.
‘Did it ever cross your mind like it did the rest of us that an early night might be useful?’ I continued.
‘Early night! That’s about as exciting as having your sinuses syringed.’
‘How did you manage it, anyway?’
‘I stayed in town last night and went on the piss. It was dead easy. Women – the hero’s perk! They were all swooning around me. They saw my suntan and thought I was already in the SAS. I didn’t tell them that I’d just come back from exercise abroad with the LI.’
‘I don’t know about hero’s perk, but she certainly perked you up, Geordie, more than once from the sound of it,’ muttered Jim.
‘No, I meant how did you manage to get her through the gates?’ I went on.
‘I didn’t. We went in the back way, down Web Tree Avenue, across the empty plot of land and under the fence behind B Squadron basha.’
‘But aren’t you knackered? I reckon you must have screwed your way through the equivalent of a half-marathon last night. You know what they say about sportsmen having a leg over the night before a big match.’
‘Knackered, no. It relaxes me. Best remedy for tension I’ve ever found.’
‘It might have relaxed you, but it kept half the bloody spider awake,’ mumbled Jim in a disgruntled voice.
‘What’s up lads, can’t you get your end away? I tell you what: you can all take turns with her when I go abroad, and don’t worry about contraception – she told me her old man’s had a vasectomy!’
The conversation subsided and was replaced by the rattle of the Bedford as it headed north. The drone of the engine had a hypnotic effect, and I found my mind drifting back to the Blue Room in Bradbury Lines and to the pre-exercise briefing that our instructor Tim had given us. This had been my first sight of the man I would grow to respect enormously as the years went by.
Tim was a tough, craggy Northerner who hailed from Manchester. He had a six-foot frame, muscular from years of thrashing through the Malayan jungle, a ramrod-straight back and a broad chest. His sandy-coloured hair was tousled and he had bushy eyebrows. Although he was quick to show his dissatisfaction at the first sign of incompetence, he was generally very quietly spoken. His tough exterior hid a generous soul. Over the next few days he would help me on several occasions with patient extra tuition in map-reading. At first I never quite knew how to take him. He could appear to be full of encouragement one moment and cut you to shreds the next. He had at one and the same time the benign look of a kindly uncle and yet a cool remoteness in his eyes. Above all, he was sure of himself. A veteran of many campaigns, he had the Military Medal to his credit.
His words came drifting back and I stared out of the back of the Bedford. ‘As you know, lads, the first three weeks are called Initial Selection. But really, “selection” is the wrong word: it should be “rejection”. No matter what the pressures are to keep the numbers up, we aim to reject not select. Let me warn you right now: no one gets in the back door. If you don’t match up to the standards, you’re out. Believe it or not I would like you all to pass. You won’t, of course. In fact very few of you will. It wasn’t all that long ago that on one selection course we failed every single trainee.’