by Andy McNab
Harry had called Des in the States. He'd dropped everything and tried to get a flight, but it was easier said than done. Blizzards had brought America to a standstill and he'd spent two days snowed in at the airport before he could even get to New York. He immediately booked himself on more than twenty flights via the Far East and South America, anywhere as long as it meant getting to Geneva.
Des had breezed into Nish's ice cave, full of insults and banter. 'Hey, Big Nose – how's it going, madman? I always said you belonged in a padded cell.'
Schwepsy, ever Mr Formal, shook Nish's hand. They were working with the firm of lawyers that represented the French government, and getting the best medical advice. They had to find a British doctor to take responsibility for him, and a private jet, since no commercial airline would fly him, even in a straitjacket. Loel Guinness had offered his plane, and Saad was picking up all the other tabs. Des's contribution had been to organize champagne for the flight, and some very pretty nurses.
A few days later, they flew Nish home. An ambulance was waiting to whisk him straight to the Charter Clinic in Chelsea. One of the psychiatrists there looked after the royal family. No expense had been spared.
As he minced around trying to put the kettle on, I pulled several bundles of fifty-pound notes from my jacket. I threw them on the kitchen worktop, trying to make it look casual.
He frowned. 'What's all this?'
'Your mortgage. If you don't pay it you'll be out, mate. The lads have had a whip-round.'
He hadn't been working. He hadn't even had the strength to fill in the DSS benefit forms. His mortgage payments were in arrears. I wasn't sure if he knew that – or if he did but didn't really care.
The drugs that were helping him were also fucking him up. Sometimes they didn't calm him, and he'd have another attack of paranoia. The last one had happened in the Stonebow Unit in Hereford General. After four weeks at the London clinic, he'd moved there as an inpatient, and then an outpatient when he gradually improved. One day, he punched a nurse because he thought she was out to get him. It was letters and cards and flowers straight afterwards, of course; he was horrified. She was OK about it – it was all part of the job, and she'd been there before. She'd even helped him fill out a couple of social-services forms that he'd filed on his kitchen table when he got home.
He pulled a bottle of milk from the fridge. I caught a glimpse of a Mars bar and a couple of lumps of cheese in there, and that was about it. He looked at the wad. 'I can't take it, mate. You know that.' His speech was slurred.
'It's not a question of can or can't,' I said. 'You have to. I can't give it back – I can't remember who gave what.' That was a lie. Everybody had put in five hundred quid, except Frank. He'd put in a grand. I'd said it had to be five hundred from him and five hundred from God, and no fucking about. I knew where both of them lived.
'Think of it as a loan.'
He looked at me blankly. 'That's all well and good, but I'll never be able to pay it back, will I?'
'Some loans are very long-term, all right?'
He dropped a mug on the worktop for me and studied the cash. After a while, he pulled a note from one of the bundles.
I shuddered as I tasted the tea. 'You might think of investing some of that in a carton of fresh milk . . .'
He pushed the money into the back pocket of his jeans. He didn't even try his tea. He obviously wasn't that mad.
'Fancy going to see Hillbilly?'
I nodded. 'Good thinking.'
Nish didn't go out that much because he didn't like people talking about him as he shuffled along the street. He liked getting a lift.
'Give us a minute.' He went into the front room and rummaged in a couple of shoeboxes.
I drove over the old bridge and through the town towards St Martin's.
We stopped outside a small Spar on the way and he jumped out.
'Get some soap while you're at it, mate,' I called after him. 'Take the Daz challenge.'
He didn't come back with milk and washing powder, or even the cigarettes I'd thought he'd gone in for. Instead, he was brandishing a bottle of Captain Morgan. 'You don't need that, mate. You got enough drama as it is. You don't need to throw that shit down your neck.'
'Shut up, you dickhead. It isn't for me.' He shut the car door. 'Well, what are we waiting for?'
97
I drove up the Ross Road in the direction of the Lines, and turned into the gravel car park by the church.
We walked along the hedgerows and into the Regimental plot. Traffic ran up and down the main drag, but trees, hedges and an old stone wall did a good job of blocking out the noise. I've never been sure if the noise actually stops at the wall, or if my mind just blocks it out while I'm there. Whatever, it was a peaceful spot.
We walked between the precise rows of headstones.
The low wall to our right was lined with the plaques of guys who'd gone home to their own people or been buried in-theatre.
I knew too many of them.
Some graves had flowers on them: some fresh, some getting on a bit. Some had nothing at all, but the whole plot was neat and crisp and well tended.
When I came to see the guys I usually stole a few flowers from the other graves and spread them about among my lot. Nish did the same. He bent over Hillbilly's grave and arranged a small bunch in a jam jar. These guys would always share a brew; it was madness not to.
He seemed more on the ball now. Maybe he'd just needed to get out.
I left him to his thoughts and had a few of my own.
Nish got up. His jeans were soaked from the knees down.
His face changed as he took the rum from his jacket. He unscrewed the cap. 'Time for the gunfire ration.'
He poured a tot over Hillbilly's grave. 'There you go, mate. Cheers.'
He took a sip himself. 'If only I'd done something about that cunt who jumped the gate.'
I wasn't too sure if he was talking to Hillbilly or me.
'If I hadn't been such an arsehole over the water, maybe I would have been with you.'
It was Hillbilly.
'Maybe I could have saved you.'
He fished in his back pocket and passed me a folded sheet of paper. It was a letter from the OC, dated 6 March 1986 – just a few weeks before he got binned. It was the one he'd told me about the night we went downtown.
Dear Nish,
As you know we have recently within the space of a week conducted two successful operations . . . My purpose in writing now is to acknowledge formally your contribution to these successes and to the currently encouraging situation . . . You have every right to be fully satisfied and indeed proud of the work you have done. Please accept my personal thanks and, on its behalf, the gratitude of the Regiment. Well done.
'If I'd just wound my neck in, I could have stayed in B Squadron with Hillbilly. I might have been with him on the Wing. I might have been there with him. Maybe, maybe . . .'
I handed it back. 'You can't beat yourself up. He'd want you to get on with your life.'
He handed over the rum and I took a sip as I followed him over to Al's. He did the same little ceremony there, had a drink with him, then looked down and shook his head. 'I know I keep telling you, but I'm sorry, mate. Not a day goes by . . .'
After a few moments in his own world he turned to me. 'Might as well do your lot while we're here, eh?'
98
We started with Bob Consiglio, whom Nish had never met. I told him he was a good man, and should have got the VC for what he did.
'He was like an Action Man-sized Rambo.'
I struck the pose, my imaginary machine-gun on my hip, my arms juddering back and forth like a schoolboy playing war. We laughed, but we both knew what the Mumbling Midget had done for the rest of us that night.
'Fucking brilliant.'
We toasted him and I poured a large one over his headstone as it started to spit with rain.
Nish had a sudden thought. 'Hey, did Bob like rum?'
I di
dn't know. 'Tough shit, he's got some now.'
He took the bottle and poured a little more over Bob. 'Just in case he does.' He laughed for the second time in as many minutes. He was the happiest I'd seen him in many months.
We went over to Vince. Nish kept the bottle. 'I'll do him – I know he likes a drop.'
He poured a generous measure. 'Here you go, big boy.'
He took another swig and passed it back to me, then rested his hand on Vince's headstone. 'I wouldn't have passed Selection without him.' He slapped the marble. 'This boy saved my bacon.'
Nish told me what had happened on the Fan Dance. It came quite early in Selection, and involved running all over the Brecon Beacons with a Bergen hanging off your shoulders. It was the middle of winter. Nish was in shit state. His head was spinning and he was sitting in the mud. It was so cold he could no longer feel his hands or feet. His sweat was starting to freeze. He knew people died up there on Selection. He propped himself against a rock, and as he struggled to sort himself out, he heard, 'You all right, mate?'
'I looked up and saw a big fuck-off moustache looking down at me, and it was this fucker.' He slapped the stone some more. His eyes were welling up and he made no attempt to hide the fact. 'Didn't know him from Adam, but he made me take some sips of water, unwrapped his own Mars bars and forced two or three of them down me. "Come on, mate, you'll be all right." He got me up, and started me off again.'
He wiped the tears from his cheeks. 'If Vince hadn't been there, that would have been me fucked on the first week.' He looked at me. 'He didn't have to stop and help me. He didn't even know who I was. Fucking good lad.'
Nish spent the next fifteen minutes standing next to Vince, moaning and honking about how he had been portrayed in a book somebody else had written about Bravo Two Zero.
He was angry. The rum got passed backwards and forwards. I wasn't too sure how Captain Morgan got on with Mr Chlorpromazine.
'Don't worry, mate. The important thing is, we know him; everybody who matters knows him.'
We followed the low wall, pausing now and then to have a look at lads we knew and share a thought. We reached Steve Lane's plaque and I gave him a splash. I realized we were getting a little bit pissed here, because I missed it on the first attempt.
We sat on one of the old wooden benches like a couple of winos as the rain started to fall more heavily, and set about finishing the bottle.
There'd be five minutes of silence, and then he'd spark up. Then he'd go quiet again. I didn't mind. I normally came here on my own. It was good to spend time here with someone who talked back.
'What made you mad, mate – do you know yet?'
'They seem to think it's a chemical imbalance in my brain. And, by the way, I'm not mad.' His eyes sparkled. 'I've had a psychotic breakdown. The problem is, they can't say when this imbalance happened.'
'It had to be at birth – I've never known you any different.'
Either he didn't hear or he didn't get it. 'I just don't know, mate, I just don't know. Think of all those HALO jumps, on and off oxygen every five minutes. Right on the edge of hypoxia we were – I know that now. Maybe the whole of Seven Troop is affected. Maybe I'm just the first to fall. Maybe the trigger was Everest. I was in shit state up there. It was like I had a jackhammer in my head.' He took another swig and passed the bottle. There weren't many left. 'I don't know what caused it, but fuck it, I've got it.'
He went quiet again. 'You know, you're right – I'm officially mad, aren't I? No Snapper chit for me.'
Then, out of the blue, he made an announcement. 'I've got a sort of a girlfriend.'
'That's good, mate.'
'Yeah, early days.'
He lit a cigarette, suddenly worried that his fingers weren't yellow enough. I wasn't going to ask. If he wanted me to know, he'd soon tell me. It might have been somebody out of the Stonebow Unit who was just as mad, or it might have been his next-door neighbour. Who cared, as long as there was somebody with him? He was being looked after by friends: Harry, Des, Schwepsy, they'd all been in and out. Cameron Spence, an A Squadron guy, had looked in whenever he'd got leave from protecting the Algerian oil fields. Everybody did as much as they could, but the guys were bouncing around all over the world; they had stuff to do.
We sat there for an hour before our bollocks started to freeze. Nish was shaking. I didn't know if it was the drugs, the temperature, or the fact that we were both soaked to the skin.
'Time for a cab?'
He nodded and rose unsteadily to his feet, sucking on yet another cigarette. 'Did it work for you?'
I straightened up as best I could. 'Did what work?'
'The book. You know – was it a cathartic experience?' He scrutinized me carefully through a cloud of smoke.
'No.'
We both swayed unsteadily. I knew he was trying to get serious.
'Maybe it would for me – you know, like a way of picking off the demons, then kicking 'em out.' He mimed pasting up a poster. 'Just published in hardcover today, ladies and gentlemen, Nish Bruce's epic, How To Be A Fruit.'
'Sounds good to me,' I said. 'It might help. You never know.'
99
I pitched up at 5 Airborne Brigade in Aldershot to talk to the Parachute Regiment. The NCOs were particularly interested in the command and control, planning and preparation aspects of the Bravo Two Zero patrol.
I bumped into their new chaplain. Round the barracks, his nickname had become Padre Two Zero once word got round that we'd been in Seven Troop together.
Frank loved being back in the army. He reminded me of a bright-eyed recruit, striding around in his frock with a spring in his step and his medals dangling.
We walked down Queen's Avenue, the main thoroughfare. He wore a maroon beret with a padre's cap badge, and a dog collar under his Para Reg smock. His SAS wings were emblazoned on his shoulder.
'Happy now, Frank?'
'Very. I've even taken up mountain climbing.'
I raised an eyebrow. I still couldn't understand why people wanted to climb up something and then climb right down again, just to be able to say they'd done it.
'And you're bringing God's word into poor, ignorant squaddies' lives?'
'Some of them.' He tapped the wings on his shoulder. 'This lets them feel they can talk to me. I tell them even Stephen Hawking thinks there must be a God.'
Every now and then he was greeted by a beep from a car horn or a shout and a thumbs-up.
'Yes, I'm happy. I'm back. The money's good as well. I'm freefalling again, and I want to climb K2.'
'You should never have got out in the first place, should you, you dickhead?'
He smiled. 'You seen Nish lately?'
'Back in H. He's still dribbling, still on the meds.'
'I've been praying for him.'
'That's good, because I've been getting drunk with him in the Regiment plot.'
I was expecting a disapproving frown, but none came.
