The training course would last four months. As I thought of my family, that suddenly began to seem a long time. I found I was missing them, and began to wonder if I should ask Kath to come back. Her mother had had her hip operation in the Musgrave, and it had been a success. The hospital had sent her home after only a week, and Kath’s presence had turned out to be a bit of a godsend. But now that Meg was almost fully mobile again, and out of pain, there was no reason from her point of view why Kath shouldn’t come home.
I would have to admit to everyone — Kath, her parents, and above all myself — that I’d made a big mistake. It wasn’t exactly a question of swallowing my pride; I didn’t feel proud at all — anything but. Rather, it was a question of being certain that I wasn’t going to make things worse by dragging Kath and Tim home. If they did come back, and I got posted across the water, we’d be separated again anyway for the whole year of the tour… The permutations went round and round in my mind. Take action? Or wait some more?
When we sat our final test on the Spanish course, my confidence had built up to a new high, largely because of Tony. Thanks to our conversations, not even the prospect of giving a lecture to the rest of the course could faze me. I stood up and talked for three minutes about the relative merits of Real Madrid and Arsenal as if I was the greatest soccer pundit on the Costa. Besides the talk, we had to answer questions about a video we’d been shown, act as interpreter in a conversation between a Colombian woman and a third party, and write a description of our favourite holiday resort. I chose Corfu, and gave it the works. Next morning, I was amazed to see my name at the top of the list of passes.
That night I phoned Kath and told her the news. She sounded bright and lively, full of the joys of summer. They’d been out somewhere along the coast, and Tim had been paddling in the sea. He was talking a lot now, and he’d been asking where his dad was.
As she talked, the idea I’d been holding back for weeks swept over me. On impulse I said, ‘Listen, Kath. How about coming back?’
I heard her draw in her breath. There was a pause.
‘Why not try it?’ I urged.
Then she said, ‘Geordie! You mean it?’
‘Of course. I’m a whole lot better. I’m back to normal. Off the booze altogether. Things don’t seem right without you.’
She must have burst into tears. Half a minute passed, and I could hear snuffling sounds.
‘Kath — are you there?’
‘Yes. Geordie?’
‘What?’
‘I’m dying to see you.’
‘Great! Come on over, then.’
‘Of course I’ll come. But listen.’
‘What?’
I heard her blow her nose. ‘Mum’s had to go back into hospital. She’s been getting pain down her leg. We’re hoping it’s nothing serious, but the implant could have shifted, and they want her in for a few days’ observation. I’ve told her I’ll be here to look after her when she comes out. I won’t be able to make it for a couple of weeks.’
‘Not to worry. I can wait. As long as I know you’re on your way.’
‘Have you pinched the tops off the beans yet?’
‘Yes,’ I said, telling a white lie. ‘I did that.’
‘Brilliant,’ she said. ‘Lots of love, Geordie.’
‘Same to you.’
As soon as I put the phone down, I whipped out into the vegetable patch. Jesus, I thought, I’ve boobed here. The fucking beans were nearly up to my shoulder and covered with big white flowers! The smell was enough to stop you in your tracks. What was I supposed to do? Pick the flowers off? No — that would take forever. ‘Pinch the tops off,’ she’d said. But where did the top begin? What was top and what was stalk? There seemed to be bunches of buds all the way up. In the end I thought, To hell with it, and went along the rows nipping four or five inches off the top of each plant, and hoping the damn things would survive.
THREE
The NI course was an eye-opener to all twelve of us who took it. Most of it happened at the Llangwern Army Training Area, known as LATA, just a few miles into Wales. Because it was so close, we carried on living where we were, in and around camp, and drove there and back every day.
On the first morning we went down in a coach, and spent the day getting issued with all manner of fancy kit, not least cars. There was a pool of cars which lived at LATA, and they were handed out to us like toys — one to every two or three of us — for the duration of the course. I was given the keys of a dark-blue Cavalier, which I shared with Pat Martin. Like all the other cars, it was quite a sporty beast but inconspicuous; that was the point — it was fast enough to get us out of trouble but didn’t stand out or attract attention. The guy who handed it over told me I would be responsible for maintaining it in good nick, and for bringing it into the MT section if any problem needed sorting out. Then he added, ‘This one goes all right — but wait till you get across the water and try the intercept cars. They’re something else.’
The other goodies we got on day one included our waistcoats — one operational, one for civilian clothes. The ops waistcoat was designed to keep everything off the wearer’s legs: it had pockets for radio, spare magazines and grenades, and a built-in holder for a secondary weapon, the handgun. There were also places for plasticuffs and torches — all the little knick-knacks — and inside pockets to hold your orange armband and baseball cap with ARMY written on it, so that in any contact you could instantly turn yourself into a member of the security forces.
The civilian waistcoat had a place for a covert radio, which you worked with a small earpiece, a mike taped to your chest, and a pressel switch in one pocket, so that you could communicate without appearing to move. The drill was to carry a pistol — probably a Walther PPK, generally known as your disco gun — about your person. If you wore a T-shirt next to the skin and another shirt over it, a bit loose, nobody would spot anything.
Most of LATA lay on one side of a main road, shielded from passing traffic by a high wire fence and an evergreen hedge. As somebody gleefully pointed out, the designers of the fence had screwed up, tilting the two-foot overhang of barbed wire inwards rather than outwards, as if its function was to stop people getting out, rather than vice-versa. ‘It’s like it used to be in East Fucking Germany,’ said Pat as he surveyed it contemptuously. ‘Anything to stop the bastards getting out.’
Pat was like that. A big, solidly built fellow, much into weight-lifting, he had ruddy cheeks and brown eyes as shiny as horse-chestnuts. He was forever laughing and joking, and never failed to come up with some cheerfully obscene comment — a typical Cockney, always ready with a blast of effing-this and effing-that, enough to startle strangers. Whenever faced with a surprise or setback, his verbal reaction was so explosive that people who didn’t know him thought he was volatile and highly-strung. But really that was just his way of letting off steam, and underneath he was as solid as a rock.
His bulk was deceptive, too. At your first sight of him you might think he was muscle-bound. Far from it — he could do 100 metres in 11 seconds, as well as being able to throw small guys over walls and suchlike — a very useful attribute when you’re on the counter-terrorist team and things get physical. He and I hadn’t had much to do with each other before the course, but at LATA we teamed up and found we could work well as a pair.
The training area itself consisted largely of rough fields running up to meet Prescott’s Wood, a big stand of trees that covered the sides and top of a rounded hill, with a road winding through it, ideal for ambushes and illegal VCPs (vehicle control points). The fields looked more or less like neglected farmland, but they included a few surprises. There were several ranges, outdoors and in. The Garaback, for instance, was a two-storey building which had the walls of its rooms lined with steel sheets and rubber matting, so that live rounds would go through the rubber and drop down without ricocheting.