try to pay for your pints. Max, emboldened, refuses to accept the money and says the drinks are on the house for you both.
Hackwill is still there, smile frozen.
‘And Reg,’ you shout across the pub, ‘you can fuck right off too, fat boy.’
Everybody cheers.
Hackwill and Jessup drink up fast and hurry out. Neither you nor James has to buy a drink all night.
* * *
In the Falklands, James, practically on consecutive days, gets close to a Victoria Cross – only this isn’t a declared war, so they aren’t handing them out – and a dishonourable discharge. On one day, he fights on while cut off from his own unit and brings in three wounded men. Later in the week, he trains a rifle on an officer he claims is about to summarily execute a sixteen-year-old Argie who is surrendering. These actions, officially processed simultaneously, cancel each other out. James has to take an early bath, removed from active duty even before the brief conflict is over. You wonder if you taught him (by example) his have-a-go foolhardiness. This possibly dangerous streak makes him, in a real sense you aren’t ashamed of, a hero.
* * *
You live in London with Chris, your girlfriend since university. When you got together, you were accused of cradle-snatching but the difference between eighteen and twenty-three is different (legally, apart from anything else) from that between fourteen and nineteen.
You supervise adventure holidays for deprived and not-so-deprived kids. You yomp around Dartmoor or the Highlands of Scotland with spooked inner-city teenagers. The lack of streetlamps at night freaks them. To give the week-long courses shape, you construct them as treasure hunts, burying prizes and giving teams treasure maps full of puzzles to solve. After a few days’ resistance, most kids fall in and enjoy using their minds and limbs. When the first ‘treasure’ is discovered to be a cache of beer, even the most recalcitrant come round.
One day, you’d like to take your treasure hunts overseas, preferably to Tortuga. You’ve sailed since university and you and Chris get out on the water most weekends. Chris calls you ‘Captain Blood’ or ‘Seaman Staines’; you call her ‘Mr Smee’ or ‘Anne Bonney’. It’s not really appropriate to fly the Jolly Roger from a Mirror dinghy, but you do. You name your boat
Hispaniola
, after the one in
Treasure Island
.
You try to spend as little time as possible under roofs.
Chris gets her first degree, in history, and starts postgraduate work on a forgotten Irish turn-of-the-century feminist writer, Katie Reed. She plans to turn her thesis into a biography and is often in Dublin, delving in the records and libraries, while you’re out and about, climbing trees and rocks and braving the elements.
You get scars but aren’t seriously hurt. You have a few accidents – the odd snapped bone or bruised bonce – but never a fatality. Whenever anyone so much as trips up, you recite your mantra of ‘Haven’t lost a kid yet.’
Chris falls pregnant but loses the baby. This makes you both think. You decide that, after another six months, you’ll either split up or get married.
* * *
Meanwhile, James knocks about the world a bit, coming home to Sedgwater to roost every few months. He takes international courier jobs and you twit him about becoming a mercenary or a pirate. He helps out on one or two expeditions into jungles or deserts, and an amateur interest in archaeology leads him to attach himself to the odd dig, where his survival skills and outdoor capabilities come in handy. He even joins you on a few of your rougher adventures.
Chris comments that she could do with a Marine to help her get through those Irish archives. You point out that her heroine would probably have been in favour of assassinating James, which leads her to recount at length Katie Reed’s actual position on armed rebellion and her war journalism. Like a lot of your ‘disputes’, this one ends in bed.
Mum
Hackwill is still there, smile frozen.
‘And Reg,’ you shout across the pub, ‘you can fuck right off too, fat boy.’
Everybody cheers.
Hackwill and Jessup drink up fast and hurry out. Neither you nor James has to buy a drink all night.
* * *
In the Falklands, James, practically on consecutive days, gets close to a Victoria Cross – only this isn’t a declared war, so they aren’t handing them out – and a dishonourable discharge. On one day, he fights on while cut off from his own unit and brings in three wounded men. Later in the week, he trains a rifle on an officer he claims is about to summarily execute a sixteen-year-old Argie who is surrendering. These actions, officially processed simultaneously, cancel each other out. James has to take an early bath, removed from active duty even before the brief conflict is over. You wonder if you taught him (by example) his have-a-go foolhardiness. This possibly dangerous streak makes him, in a real sense you aren’t ashamed of, a hero.
* * *
You live in London with Chris, your girlfriend since university. When you got together, you were accused of cradle-snatching but the difference between eighteen and twenty-three is different (legally, apart from anything else) from that between fourteen and nineteen.
You supervise adventure holidays for deprived and not-so-deprived kids. You yomp around Dartmoor or the Highlands of Scotland with spooked inner-city teenagers. The lack of streetlamps at night freaks them. To give the week-long courses shape, you construct them as treasure hunts, burying prizes and giving teams treasure maps full of puzzles to solve. After a few days’ resistance, most kids fall in and enjoy using their minds and limbs. When the first ‘treasure’ is discovered to be a cache of beer, even the most recalcitrant come round.
One day, you’d like to take your treasure hunts overseas, preferably to Tortuga. You’ve sailed since university and you and Chris get out on the water most weekends. Chris calls you ‘Captain Blood’ or ‘Seaman Staines’; you call her ‘Mr Smee’ or ‘Anne Bonney’. It’s not really appropriate to fly the Jolly Roger from a Mirror dinghy, but you do. You name your boat
Hispaniola
, after the one in
Treasure Island
.
You try to spend as little time as possible under roofs.
Chris gets her first degree, in history, and starts postgraduate work on a forgotten Irish turn-of-the-century feminist writer, Katie Reed. She plans to turn her thesis into a biography and is often in Dublin, delving in the records and libraries, while you’re out and about, climbing trees and rocks and braving the elements.
You get scars but aren’t seriously hurt. You have a few accidents – the odd snapped bone or bruised bonce – but never a fatality. Whenever anyone so much as trips up, you recite your mantra of ‘Haven’t lost a kid yet.’
Chris falls pregnant but loses the baby. This makes you both think. You decide that, after another six months, you’ll either split up or get married.
* * *
Meanwhile, James knocks about the world a bit, coming home to Sedgwater to roost every few months. He takes international courier jobs and you twit him about becoming a mercenary or a pirate. He helps out on one or two expeditions into jungles or deserts, and an amateur interest in archaeology leads him to attach himself to the odd dig, where his survival skills and outdoor capabilities come in handy. He even joins you on a few of your rougher adventures.
Chris comments that she could do with a Marine to help her get through those Irish archives. You point out that her heroine would probably have been in favour of assassinating James, which leads her to recount at length Katie Reed’s actual position on armed rebellion and her war journalism. Like a lot of your ‘disputes’, this one ends in bed.
Mum
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