In my day I've had to suffer such
insults as being called a Canoe Driver, an Underwater Knife Fighter and a
Bubble Head, mostly, it has to be said, by those sad, useless wankers in the
SAS. Right this instant, however, it's none other than
the Grim Reaper who is whispering insults into my ear.
He's telling me that
I've finally taken a bite out of the big one and it's time to be giving up the
ghost and calling myself dead. Too much. There's an
edge to his tone, he's sounding just a wee bit miffed at this decision of mine
to cling on. I can only assume that he's of the opinion that since I've been in
his employ for most of my adult life then I should be just as eager as I've
always been to be at his beck and call.
No chance. Strangling,
shooting, field-knifing, blowing-to-smithereens or simply drowning the
opposition into his arms is one thing, what is going down right this instant is
way too close up and personal to be treated with such a casual, off-hand
manner. There is no way that I am departing this life without putting up a
fight. Not in my nature, I'd be damn near useless at what I do if I gave in
that easy and he knows it.
It's only when the shit
hits the fan that you're forced into asking if your life's been worth the
candle. Until this happened to me I thought I was doing okay. Not perfect,
nobody gets away with that one but until a few hours back I was downright
happy. I mean really happy. A good, loving wife, a good life
and terrific prospects.
In my time I've been on
the wrong end of enough lies and betrayal to fill a bucket. In Special Forces
it comes with the territory. You have to learn to lie even to your mates to
cover things like your true identity, your mates have
to lie to cover their identity because everybody betrays everybody in the end.
Eventually either you get caught or they get caught.
You see torture ain't the gentlemanly sport it used to be. Believe me,
everybody gives up what they know these days and nobody fancies the opposition
knowing their home address or where their best mate's wife and kids live.
So what I am saying is
that I've grown used to betrayal and lies, learned to live with them. But when
all of this is said and done what has just happened to me is the betrayal to
end all betrayals. There have been enough lies going down to fill a mine shaft,
much less a bucket. It made me so sick to my stomach that I couldn't live with
it so I reacted, as our American neighbours will have it, with extreme
prejudice.
There's no point to be
going into the whys and the wherefores at this right good moment in time.
Sufficient to say that I have been on my back, out here in the open, way up on
an exposed hillside, unable to move, for more than two hours now and the
gloaming's closing in.
This does not look good.
I do know what I'm talking about. I come from a very long line of professional
warriors who have adhered strictly to the code of the Samurai all of their
lives. Unfortunately, like the Samurai, it now seems us modern guys are facing
a similar sea change in the general scheme of things. Extinction has become a
very definite possibility.
Lying here, I see the
face of the only woman I have ever loved with the clarity of the day we first
met. She was alive and kicking only a few hours ago, right up here on the hill
beside me. I am still, to this day, held in awe of the moment we met. She was
never my type.
In those days I went for
the very tall, the very stunning, long legs and tits as big as they come sort
of woman. Every last one of them a head turner that frequently made me the envy
of every officer and squaddy in the Special Boat Service.
Thing was, meeting her,
Seonaid, in one single instant my whole outlook altered. When I looked in the
mirror as I shaved the very next morning I no longer recognised myself. None of
those head turning qualities are there in her. Nothing to
attract a guy, not really. Plain Jane would about define her. Any guy,
down to the lowest squaddy, would walk right on past and never give it a second
glance.
For me it's her eyes
that first astonish but what astounds me to the point of distraction is the
fact that I immediately see her as somebody of equal standing. She simply
doesn't give a toss whither I find her attractive or not. She doesn't give a
bugger. She comes across as being as wild and as untameable as the wildcats
that roam these hills.
All of the women that I
had been with to this date have been stunning but to the last one all of them
have made the conscious decision not to enter into the adult world. They prefer
to remain within the safety of their childhood throughout their entire lives.
They insist upon being cosseted and pampered and looked after and told what to
do and when to do it.
I had never viewed any
female that I happened to be going out with as being anything other than being
from a subordinate gender whose only value in this life was to serve me or any
other guys on the planet as a convenient shag. Don't
go condemning me for this, it was them who put themselves up for it and they
were never in short supply.
Seonaid was strikingly different. She was a
marine biologist. Once in a wet suit and in the water she could even out-swim
me. No mean feat. Mostly, however, she swam naked. Hated
restriction of any kind. What a creature, what a discovery. We laughed,
we danced, we shagged each other brainless and then we laughed again. God did
we laugh. Never since I was
kid had I laughed so freely.
Strangely, this image of
Seonaid comforts me in that I am left with little choice as to how I should now
proceed. I am no longer able to recognise myself. All I'm left with now can't
be called a life, all it can be called is a pointless farce. The appeal of the
grave is moving in my direction. Why not. It might be
the wound, it might be the toxins that my brain is now producing but I'm in and
I'm out. I want to live, I want to die.
It was only a few hours
ago that I arrived home unannounced, what a cliché. I copped for it in Helmand
Province of all places, another cliché. The shrapnel barely grazed my arse
making it look as if I was lying face down with my head buried in the dirt
during the fire fight. Anyway it put me on compulsory sick leave.
Home is the sailor, home
from the sea. I don't 'phone, I don't text. I want to see that special light in
Seonaid's eyes when I arrive. The overwhelming gratitude to be gained from that
fact that not only have I arrived but that I actually exist.
In one those very still
moments that is only accessible between bouts of perfect love making, she once
confessed that she had almost come to the conclusion that she would never
experience love of the kind that is only made available to matching souls. She
and I, she said, were matching souls.
Flowers,
chocolates and an extremely expensive necklace in hand. This is going to be the night of all
nights, there have been some great ones but this is going to be spectacular,
this is going to put all of them in the shade. I've been ramming multi-vits
down my gullet for almost a day now. It is my intention to shag her until she
screams for me to stop before she dies of ecstasy. I am going to walk her hand
in hand through the gates of paradise into our own personal version of heaven
on earth. God, this is going to be the night of all nights. We might not be
able to tell our grandchildren about it but we'll be remembering it ourselves,
even then.
Seonaid is not in the sitting room. I search
our bedroom which is to the back. I look in the conservatory. Her car in is the
drive so I know that she's at home. It's then I hear it, shrieks, not of terror
but of pleasure. The sort of moans that only come from someone on the very
fringe of an orgasm that promises to top all previous orgasms on earth. These
are the shrieks and moans of a woman. If I wasn't so bewildered then I would
find myself envying her.
It's coming from my
parent's bedroom which is yet another impossibility.
The room has been empty for years. These days it's a sort of mausoleum. I
actually freeze. Petrified. Afraid not only of the
room which I almost never enter but of what I am about to find.
I don't for one moment
believe in ghosts or apparitions or any of that bunk but poltergeist
immediately spring to mind. Have we been invaded by them? It's nothing of this
earth, that's for sure.
I am petrified. It takes
me all of fifty seconds to get my legs to function. I move forward and throw
open the door. There she is, Seonaid, the love of my life, in my father's bed,
with portraits of both him and my mother up on the wall and gazing directly
down onto their heads. I say they because there are two of them, both naked.
That Seonaid,
who will from this point forward be referred to as The Bitch is in this bed of
all beds is sufficiently shocking. I move closer so that I can see who the guy
is, the guy who I am about to beat shitless. Seonaid isn't with a guy, she is with a girl, a teenage girl. Not only is she
with her, Seonaid has her head between the girls thighs and it is the girl who
is screaming like a bitch on heat.
My father is being
defiled. My mother is being defiled. I am being defiled. My home is being
defiled. The family, our tradition, all of it being swept away and this is
taking place on my watch. This place is under my command and yet I remained
ignorant as to what has been going on in my absence. I am not fit for the
purpose. In one single instant I've become a joke. A clown.
A creature to ridicule. A cuckold.
Of course I lose it. My
wife with another fella would have been sufficiently devastating but with a
woman? I am insufficient, I am not up to it, I am
inadequate. Not up to the task. So lousy and inadequate
as a guy that my wife has to find sexual satisfaction in other women. My brain
just explodes. I rush into the lounge and dig out my reserve pistol a Sig Sauer
p226 9mm from behind some books on the history of the Royal Marine Corps.
The situation is about
as dire as it gets, I cannot imagine being this wired without something deathly
in my mitt. An M16 would have felt better. I don't know why I do this. To be
honest at that right good moment I need reassurance more than I needed oxygen.
Holding a weapon of some sort, any sort, just makes me feel more in control. I
feel as if I can get the situation under control immediately by simply waving a
weapon. This is what I do for a living. We do it all of the time with rowdy
crowds of Hajjis or the like.
I point the pistol at
the teenager and turn her naked out of my home. She takes off down the path and
out into the street where she gets some looks, I can tell you. The village of
Drymen just north of Glasgow is not populated by the sort of individuals who
will tolerate public nudity in any shape or form.
While I'm doing this The
Bitch grabs a housecoat from the bottom of the bed, runs into the conservatory
to collect something and then does a runner out of the back door and up into
what she sees as the safety of the hills.
I have PNGs so I grab
them, I use them for spotting night life amongst the animal kingdom, wildcats
and the like, sorry, Passive Night Goggles, not evening yet but it will be
along soon so I am keeping my options open. I follow knowing that I can easily
catch up on her. She is fast but no longer trains. I train whither I like it or
not, one of the virtues of being with the SBS.