by Andy McNab
I left Frank to carry on God's good work, but before I jumped in the car back to Hereford he grabbed hold of my arm again. 'I want to write a book, you know.'
'About what, mate?'
'I want to talk about God – how it all happened, how I found Him. I know why He put me here, Andy, and that's to help people. I think it would help them to know my story.'
100
9 May 1998
I wandered back into the marquee with Nish. The Eurovision Song Contest was certainly giving everyone an appetite. Mountains of food and drink were being consumed as Terry Wogan reminded us briskly of the competing acts before the big vote. A chorus of cheers and boos rang round the tables.
Nish put an arm round my shoulder. 'Great party, mate. Now, where's Jackie Collins disappeared to?' Frank's Baptism of Fire had come out the previous October and turned him into a bit of a celebrity: Nish had instantly dropped the Father Frank handle and rebranded him.
The tabloids loved him too. He was an irresistible combination of Rambo and Mother Teresa. He still carried his Claymore bag over his shoulder, but he just had his Bible in it these days – and a bundle of photographs because people kept stopping him in the street and asking for his autograph. Not a day went by without a flood of fan mail and more requests to speak about his experiences than he knew how to handle.
Frank was out of the army again, still trying to find I don't know what. He'd finished the padre bit, and was being courted by every overseas charity and children's welfare group on the planet. He was still freefalling, and spent his weekends running up mountains to get closer to God Squad HQ.
Nish seemed to have banished his demons and got himself together enough to write a book. Freefall was coming out in three months. He gave me a sheepish grin. 'Then you'll see how mad I am.'
He spotted Livvy – who was living with him now – and went off to join her. She was in her thirties, very pretty, and juggling a job with being a single mum of two small girls. Nish was besotted. I was happy for him. Somebody was gripping him, and it looked like it was working. She must have seen something in him, too, if she was willing to stick around after taking one look at his sink and that terrible brown sofa.
He was still on the meds because he still had paranoid episodes. One time, he thought the IRA were out to get him, disguised as road workers. He'd been aggressive with people, angry, sad, morbid. He'd been in and out of the Stonebow Unit, drugged up to the eyeballs for days at a time, but Livvy had been at his side throughout. She'd cleaned up the house and seemed to have sorted out his life.
One of the upsides of his new medication was an obsession with personal cleanliness, although he still seemed intent on smoking himself to death.
Frank sat down beside me as the final votes came in. The Israeli transvestite won, and I was eighty quid to the good on the sweepstake. It didn't get better than this.
101
By mid-afternoon everybody who'd stayed overnight – in tents or sleeping-bags on the floor – had rattled off home. I minced around picking up empties and getting the marquee ready for collection.
At six o'clock, I heard the chug of a big old diesel engine coming up the drive. We weren't expecting more visitors. I went outside and stood on the bridge as Frank parked his Mercedes box van, the size of a small truck, in the mud. When he was away doing God's work, it was his travelling church and mobile home, all in one. He prayed, cooked and slept in it.
He'd put the family business to good use, kitting it out with a bed, bench seating, and cooker surround. Nish had nicknamed it Pikey Two Zero when he'd first bought the thing and dossed on an old mattress on the bare metal floor at freefall meets, but now it was carpeted and had all mod cons he called it the Popemobile.
Frank rubbed his hands together as he walked up the path. 'Finished early, so I thought I'd see if there was any food left.'
There was, tons of it. But he was lying. When he'd left, it had been to go sky surfing at Peterborough, three hours away, en route to London. It was Frank's latest craze, jumping with a snowboard strapped to his feet and trying to slalom across the sky.
We sat in the kitchen and finished off the last of the chicken in creamy something or other with rice, and he told me about the latest offer he'd had to front a scheme for a children's charity in Africa. Initially, he'd been excited about it. Now it didn't look so good. 'I want to go out there and get my hands dirty, but all they're really after is another patron.' He'd had the same problem with inner-city charities. He was desperate to take the kids canoeing and climbing, but they just wanted him as a fund-raiser. He said it made him sad and frustrated.
'So what are you going to do? You fucked up, getting out a second time. You've got to get a plan together, mate.'
'I'm not sure things ever go according to plan. They didn't for Tommy Shanks, did they?' He played with his food like a child, pushing it around his plate. Not pissed off, but sad. Miserable, even. I'd never seen him like it. 'You know people for years, and they change and do things you'd never expect . . .'
'You all right, mate?'
'No, not really.' He fixed me with his cornflower blues. 'I've been thinking about Al. The waste and stupidity of it all. Why couldn't we have been there to save him? What are we doing with our lives?'
He was getting a bit too deep for me. He was the one who was supposed to know the answers, but he just kept coming out with more questions. 'I always try and do the right thing – be a good person. Why am I so lost?'
'I thought God sorted all that shit for you. Hasn't He got a plan?'
Frank stared into the middle distance. The pulpit voice was back, very clear and precise. The miserable face lit up. I was suddenly in the presence of the fervour of the convert. 'I do have a plan. God has given it to me.'
'Can He give me one?'
'No, not this plan. This plan is to stop the feeling of being lost. You don't need it. If you did, He would have given it to you as well.'
'So what's he got up his sleeve this time? Starting up an orphanage in Angola? Building a church on top of Everest?'
This evening Frank wasn't biting.
He got to his feet, helped himself to four or five cans of Coke and packed away some fruit and hunks of cheese. 'Free food and drink, that's what I came for. So that's it, I'm off.'
I walked him back to the van. He jumped in and I walked alongside as he reversed down the drive.
The window powered down.
'Call me as soon as you can tell me this plan of yours, OK? I'm doing book stuff in New York for a couple of weeks, but then we can get together. Have a McSummit, eh?' I suggested.
He stopped the van and stretched out his hand. 'Yeah, I'll see you, Andy.'
We shook.
'In London, when I get back.'
'Let's do that.' He locked his eyes on mine and didn't let go of my hand. I thought he was going to kiss me for a minute, but then he changed his mind.
102
17 June 1998
I threw open the door of my hotel room, which overlooked Central Park. The message light on the bedside phone was blinking. I hit the playback button, and heard a familiar voice. It was Mark Lucas, my literary agent in London, and the guy was almost crying. 'I've got some bad news.'
It had to be Nish, I just knew it. He'd done something stupid again.
'It's Frank . . .'
Oh, fuck. Parachuting accident, it had to be.
'He's committed suicide . . .'
No. I'd misheard. There had to be some mistake.
I sat down – collapsed – on the bed and hit the repeat button.
'He committed suicide . . . yesterday . . . give me a call.'
It was the early hours of the morning in London, but I picked up the receiver and dialled.
I hadn't misheard. There hadn't been a mistake.
Frank had plugged the gap under the door of a friend's garage, run a hosepipe from the exhaust into the cab, then locked himself in and turned on the engine.
I sat there on the
bed in a Manhattan skyscraper with its panoramic, 70mm movie view of the city that never sleeps, and all I could think was: Frank, you cunt.
103
24 June 1998
The line of mourners snaked along the pedestrian walkway of Hereford town centre and into St Peter's Church. I recognized former and still serving members of the Regiment, wives, friends and a whole lot of other people Frank had collected over the years. I stayed outside with my fellow pallbearers, waiting for the hearse to arrive.
A bell tolled. Shoppers stopped and watched. They all knew whose funeral it was. The local media had made it a big deal.
There were plenty of theories bouncing around as to why he'd killed himself. Some said he was angry with God. Some said he was angry with everyone. Others thought he was just angry, full stop. Look at the way he killed himself, they said. That was angry, no question. I wasn't convinced. I thought he was making sure people didn't forget him. He wanted to be a tiger for a day. The soft lad had certainly done that.
Frank was a searcher, who couldn't find what he was looking for. Did he even know what it was? He found God and got out of the army. But he missed his old life and missed Al, and missed the opportunity to kill the man who'd killed his mate. He was up and down, all over the place. Post-career anticlimax was the latest syndrome that Rumour Control had him suffering from, but I thought it was just another word for post traumatic stress disorder, and I had a feeling Gordon Turnbull would have agreed. But that was too easy an excuse.
Frank bounced around trying to work out what he wanted, and he couldn't because he'd fucked up when he left the army – he'd finally admitted as much that day in McDonald's, just around the corner from where I stood. The Church had never filled the vacuum. Even when he'd got back in as a padre, the gap was still there. He'd wanted to help people, but he'd still wanted to be a soldier. He'd wanted to come back to the Regiment.
He left a letter saying he wanted to be buried next to Al and the others in the plot, but that could never happen. They got him as close as they could in the civilian area, but even in death he couldn't find his way back into the fold.
The suicide was well planned and prepared. He'd known what he was going to do at the party, and that was just one of the things that pissed me off. He'd known exactly where he was going, and didn't even pull the safety cord. It made me fucking angry. We were his mates. He kept telling me he was there to listen and help others with their problems, so I made the mistake of assuming he didn't have any of his own. God was on his side – wasn't that supposed to solve everything?
He'd spent the rest of his days trying to replace what he'd walked away from. And he'd never managed it. Regret had consumed him. Maybe that was why he didn't feel he could tell anybody. But we were his mates, for fuck's sake.
My anger was probably a way of salving my own guilt; I knew I'd never quite forgive myself for not realizing what the fuck he was up to. It seemed so obvious now. Why hadn't I spotted it?
The hearse arrived, and we carried the coffin inside. I took my seat in the big old imposing stone edifice, but I took none of it in. I thought back to the time over the water when we'd talked about funerals in the van. I didn't listen to the waffle; I just thought about Frank and how he'd died. Like I'd said to him, the prayers meant nothing to me. Only the man did.
I looked around me. He'd certainly picked up a weird collection of people on his journey. There were friends from his evangelical, happy-clappy days, from the theology college, prayer groups, the cathedral lads down the road, the kids and youth groups he'd helped. You could tell the guys from the Regiment. Most had sun-tans and ill-fitting suits, and crammed the walkways and galleries rather than sitting down. It was the biggest crowd he'd ever pulled in this church.
I sat there listening to speaker after speaker say great things about him, but all I could think was: What a waste. He could have done so much to help people, if only he'd realized it was OK to ask for help himself. After all, he'd kept telling me it was OK to do that. We would have taken the piss out of him, of course. But we would have helped.
The Bishop of Hereford had opened one of the great halls of the cathedral down by the river, and most people headed down there after the service. The family had arranged a private burial at St Martin's, in a plot just ten metres or so from Al and the rest of them. We lowered his coffin into the ground, and then I stood back. I felt I was imposing. This was family shit.
I stayed a while after they'd gone. I was going to walk down to the corner shop and buy some gunfire ration.
One of the gravediggers approached me. We recognized each other from previous visits I'd made. He held up a carnation that had been left behind after the service. 'We're going to fill him in now, Andy. You want to say goodbye?'
I took the flower and stood there, telling the dickhead he'd chosen a fucking stupid way to die. Then I threw the flower into the grave and the lads got busy with their shovels.
I wandered down to the Spar and bought a half-bottle, then dropped by Al, Hillbilly, Vince, Bob, Legs, all the rest of the dickheads lying there. Then I went off to the cathedral for sandwiches, sticky buns and wine.
The hall was packed. It wasn't the first time any of us had been to a friend's funeral, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. We toasted Frank, and when the free drink ran out we melted away to clog up the pubs and wine bars. There were a few more smiles about the place now, and some laughter. Now we'd escaped the austere surroundings of the cathedral, we could take the piss out of Frank and remember him as friends should.
Nish actually bought me a drink, and we propped up the bar, ties loosened.
'You know, Frank came back on the Sunday, and he said goodbye. I didn't realize.'
'Why?' Nish looked bemused. 'I tell you what, Andy. There's many a time I've thought about being Frank's lead scout on this particular mission.'
'Not you as well, mate. What the fuck's going on here? You two been licking the same kill-me spoon?'
He took a big gulp of Stella and his hands started to shake. 'The nights are the worst. That's when I think about topping myself. I've worked it all out – how to do it, when to do it, what songs I want at the service, the whole fucking thing. And remember, I want burning. I don't want to rot in the ground like Frank.'
'That's the drugs talking, mate. Everything's all right. You've got a bit of control now. You've got Livvy, it's all right. Stop being a dickhead.'
'No, mate. I've got my Para Reg head on for this. I know what I'm talking about. It's all good. I've got it planned out. But don't worry – it's only when you decide you will commit suicide that you can. When that happens, you don't think about the service or where you want to be buried, you just go and do it.' He talked quite happily about it as the Stella made its way down the glass. He drained it with one final gulp. 'But he knows where's he going, doesn't he? He's going up to see his boss. Fuck knows where I'll be going.'
I wanted to tell Nish that I thought Frank's problem was that he kept looking for certainties in a world where they were a bit thin on the ground. But I thought there was time enough for that. 'Another pint? You're buying.'
Cameron Spence came and saved the day by offering to buy. I liked Cammy, even if he was from the Queen's Regiment. He still bit like a hungry fish when he got a hard time for it. He was a wiry, Road Runner type of guy, and the world's most intense and honest man – to the point at which he made men angry and women cry.
He raised his glass. 'Here's to Frank. I would've had him in my patrol any time.'
It was the highest accolade Frank could have received from any of us.
The next day, the Sun ran a story that said I'd been standing at Frank's grave with a carnation in my hand, crying. And I don't think they were wrong.
