Recoil

6

I left the shade and wandered back across the carpet of orange-red dust.

Three white faces were sitting under the cam net beneath the trees. Standish was at the head of the table, the terrible twins either side of him. They were all huddled over plates and mugs. Just beyond the tents, the small Indian guy stood in a cloud of smoke, fanning like crazy over a split oil drum welded to a frame of old steel cross-sections. The brai was sizzling big-time.

The table sitters broke off their conversation and sat back when they saw me approach. Standish broke the ice as I ducked under the net. ‘Here he is! We were just talking about you.’

He sounded quite different from the way he’d been earlier. Guys like him normally do once they get what they’re after. I nodded at Tooley and Bateman. With any luck, I wouldn’t have to be around long enough to worry about which of them was which.

‘These two gentlemen didn’t know you were coming. I wasn’t sure myself until Sam called last night, by which time they were on the move and in the middle of a contact, so . . . Anyway, we’re glad of your help while we sort out our little local difficulties.’

I nodded and grinned as if I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do right now.

Standish did the introductions and motioned me to sit.

Bateman was the one who’d done the talking on the strip, and he was the first to open his mouth now. ‘We thought you were another of Sam’s fucking prayer-time guys.’ They exchanged a look.

I smiled. ‘I just wanted a lift, that’s all. I know him – and Miles here – from the Regiment.’

That got a nod of approval. ‘We were both RLI during the war,’ Bateman said. ‘There until the last day, man.’

I returned the nod, hoping they wouldn’t see it as a signal to start a soldier love-in and bore me shitless.

The Rhodesian Light Infantry had been good soldiers, but they were steadfastly racist. South Africans, Brits, Irish, Americans, Norwegians – they were all welcome as long as they were the right shade of white. I hadn’t known about that stuff at the time. It had sounded so glamorous and exciting to me as an eighteen-year-old squaddie in the Green Jackets that I’d nearly joined up myself. I was hating Tidworth garrison life and grabbed the brochure I was handed in a bar with the kind of enthusiasm Sam greeted the New Testament. It showed guys in camouflage crossing a river in glowing Technicolor, with an elephant and plenty of jungle in the background to complete the fantasy. To a new boy recruit, who’d been lumbered with carrying the section’s GPMG, it was like an invitation to the world’s biggest adventure playground.

It wasn’t to be. There’d been such an exodus from the British Army that anyone applying for PVR (premature voluntary release) found themselves up against a brick wall. No one could leave the battalion, we were told, because we were going to Northern Ireland and you couldn’t quit before operations. It was bollocks, of course, but we fell for it. And now, looking at the faces across the table, I realized it had been for the best.

Bateman took a swig of his brew. ‘Miles was just saying how Sam was always trying to convert you.’ Before I could answer he added, ‘All that children of God stuff – I tell you, man, it’s a waste of time. Blacks will just take and take and then fuck off back into the bush.’

Tooley picked up a slab of dark red meat in both hands and ripped off a chunk with his teeth. He talked while he chewed. ‘I tell you, man, the best way to deal with these boys is cut off their hair and tell them you’re keeping it. If they don’t do what you want, tell them you’ll give it to the kindoki bitches to put a spell on them.’

Bateman nodded in approval, and Standish chuckled politely. Bad news, as far as I was concerned. Tooley warmed to his theme, swinging the meat from hand to hand to emphasize each of his words of wisdom.

‘Back in Rhodesia, Nick, the black boys knew their place. Now they’ve got diamond studs in their fucking teeth and the light of fucking redemption in their wide, staring eyes.’

They seemed to have mistaken a nod and a bit of a smile for a like mind. I raised an open palm. This kind of stuff had to be nipped in the bud. ‘Hey, I don’t care whether people are red, green or blue, rich or poor, Muslim or Christian, you know what I mean? I’m not into all that shit.’

They looked at me, and then at each other, not really understanding what the fuck I was talking about. Standish remained unmoved. I had no doubt what he’d have been doing down on the plantation in another life.

I went and helped myself to some large lumps of whatever it was that was sizzling on the brai, and an iced tea from the fridge, then headed for Sam’s tent. A beer would have been nice, but not just before a patrol, and in charge of a weapon. Old habits die hard.