Surviving When The Lights Went Out

We dressed and headed out taking just the crossbow this time, having a pretty good idea where the next Roe deer might be found, having seen droppings and the gradual attack on their food source there.

We stalked for at least an hour reaching the hide I'd built, staying upwind ('keep the wind in your face Jim' I could hear my Dad say) and we saw a quite old looking buck. Jack smiled and nodded and mouthed 'perfect' to me having already explained how we could best manage our supply of venison. The bow was true to its aim and after a few bounds it dropped, Jack running out with Dad's knife bleeding and grallicking it, but keeping the liver (euurgh!) as she really liked the flavour.

"I'll flash-fry very thin slices Jimmy," she said, her face illuminated, "You'll love it!"

"Yeeeeeeeeah," I said.

We carried it back between us on a pole and hung it in the curing shed, skinned it and prepared it for chopping into joints in a few days' time.

She did indeed flash-fry thin slices adding some bacon pieces, wild garlic and spring onions, and OK, it wasn't THAT bad.

She loved being right but no way could I tell her just how right she'd been. My face did the work for her though.

"Jimmy," she said as we cleared away the dishes and washed them up, "I..." I slipped an arm around her, "I'd really like to make love with you tonight... if that's OK that is?"

"I'd love that more than ever," I said with a grin, "I'll have to go to the barn and get those condoms."

"Funny place to keep condoms Jimmy," she said, knowing full well why they were there.

We kissed, and I slipped on my trainers to cross the yard, getting halfway across to the barn before the heavens opened and I ran the last bit.

Shit, the faint hint of daylight slipped away as the skies darkened and lightning flashed across the sky.

Shit. I walked down the barn to the end to the studio bit where I opened the plastic box, took out the two condoms and slipped them in my jeans pocket. I closed the plastic box, shut the studio door to keep out the damp air and waited for the torrential ran to ease. It did a bit so I decided I could now walk back, switching off the light in the barn and watching the lightning dance across the ink-black sky as it moved away and the rain eased off but not that much; ah well, at least I'd have a reason to strip out of my clothes.

My head down I ran towards the croft, happy that in a few moments I would back in her arms and tearing off our clothes and getting into bed, shit she might already be naked and waiting for me.

With a spring in my step I pushed open the door and stopped for a moment. I could hear voices and thought that Jack might have turned up the radio and I pushed the door open to find out.

"Jim!" she shouted holding up a hand and I stopped dead.

-

She was stood in the kitchen with raised hands and with her right pointed to the man in our kitchen that was pointing a green and black rifle at my chest.

"This is my brother Jim I was telling you about," she said to the scraggy bearded and scruffy looking man in the kitchen. He was wearing multi-terrain pattern uniform that showed signs of hard use and had that smell that some of my Dad's kit had when he came back from long trips or exercise phases. This man was also wearing an equipment vest with a variety of pouches -- lots of them in fact - and there was a large MTP bergen rucksack by his feet.

"Deana was jus' telling me it's just you two that live here." He said with a gruffness to his voice that seemed to me to be 'put on'.

So she'd told him her name was Deana.

"Yes," I said clicking to how her thought processes had gone in those few moments she'd been alone with him.

"Your picture is on the cover of your Dad's memoires," said the man keeping the assault rifle, an SA80 A3 I guessed from the colour and build of the thing, pointing at my chest.

"Yes," I said again.

"I knew your Dad," said the man, "great shame when I heard he passed on, he was one of our own and the Sass lost one of its best when he died," he broke eye contact with me, "told me to drop by if I was ever passing..."

Strange, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of Regiment Lads he'd ever been likely to say that too, and I was pretty sure this wasn't one of them. We hadn't stayed here in years, how would he...

"Had you served with him?" I asked, something tinkling away in my brain.

"Yeah," he said, "I was in Two Para and your Dad was on my selection board, beasted me to high heaven at the Jungle phase in Belize."

It went quiet in the room. The quiet suspicious jingle in my subconscious was now getting louder. My Dad had left the army three years before, and he'd never run any training in Belize, he'd only ever beasted people in Brunei -- Belize was more recent; but it was the conversation before when the armed man had said 'The Sass' making those three letters into one word. It was custom within the Special Air Service that insiders only ever referred to it as 'The Regiment' and I'd learnt that at my Dad's knee.

Someone saying they had served in 'The Sass' or even the 'The Special Air Service' invariably generally hadn't, because:

a) it was ALWAYS 'The Regiment'

b) real officers and men of arguably the finest and most elite military units in the world never really talk about being in it.

Hmmm...

The scruffy man was plainly what my father called 'A Walt'.

A Walter Mitty - the character created by James Thurber in the thirties that led a far more interesting 'secret life' in his heroic daydreams than the shopping trips and nagging he suffered with his wife.

But this Walt actually had an assault rifle that I could see through the clear strip on the side of the magazine was fully loaded up with shiny brass bullets.

"Can I get you a cup of tea?" said Jack, watching the man with the machine gun. "just milk I'm afraid, as we have be careful with our sugar."

We needed it for bread and for fruit cake of course.

"Yeah, nice," he said, "Haven't had a cup of tea made for me by a pretty girl in over a month." He smiled at her and I cringed.

Jack gave a sort of huffed smile at what this armed intruder thought was him being charming.

I looked at out visitor and his kit.

While there was a lot of it, it just didn't look 'right'. It wasn't 'tight', it wasn't straight and together, several of the pouches were open and flapping and I could hear what was obviously his knife, fork or spoon rattling around in a mess tin. When he moved he made noise which was something the youngest and newest military recruit was taught was a 'bad thing'.

"Where have you come from?" I said, "we've both been here since the lights went off in March. We listen in to the radio of course but it's hard to believe what they say since the army was called onto the streets to protect life, limb and property. Was that what you were doing?"

"I was yeah." He said taking a deep breath and I could see he was thinking about it. He raised an eyebrow and grew with his own importance, "I was guarding the cabinet, over there in Chartwell," he said with a bit of a sneer, nodding completely in the wrong direction and towards Wales.

"Chequers," said Jack correcting him without thinking, being a bit of an expert in country houses of the rich and powerful.

"What?"

"Chequers is the Prime Minister's country residence, Chartwell was where Winston Churchill lived when he retired."

"Ooooh yeah!" he said with a self-deprecating chuckle, "yeah that place, Chequers!" he shook his head, "Been on the trot for too long," he looked at me, "mind if I sit down?"

"You're holding the machine gun," I said.

"Oh this?" he said, pulling the pine chair from under the kitchen table and sitting on it, "OPSEC mate, you know how it is."

Operational security? Really?

"Yeah, but we aren't going to shoot you are we." Jack's stolen shotgun was unloaded and stood in the broom cupboard next to the air rifle, with the vacuum cleaner and the mops and buckets, luckily with her dark green Barbour coat with the pockets full of shells hung over the end of the barrel, while Dad's high-power hunting crossbow was safely across in my studio, drying off after its use that afternoon.

"Not allowed to put it down mate, sorry."

"My Dad was in the..." I paused and took a deep breath, "My Dad was in the Sass..." I did it again to see if the apparent super-soldier would pick me up on it, "and he never said you couldn't unload a weapon and put it down."

I could see our chap was becoming a little annoyed now.

"This are strange times," he said, "we could be attacked at any moment."

"Who by?" said Jack with a questioning look.

"W... What?" he said, a look in his eye saying he didn't have an answer.

"You're the first person that Deana and I have met in two months, I think you're quite safe."

"Yeah but how do I know I'm safe from you?!" he raised an eyebrow to look across at the pretty girl in the kitchen.

Jack turned and handed him his mug of tea,

"You really need to take the chance... sorry what is your name?"

"John..." he said, "John... Maguire." A man not sure of where his assignment had been guarding the British Government and also needed a second to think about his own name, curiouser and curiouser, "Trooper, 22nd Special Air Service Regiment!" He saluted her with a cheeky-chappie slap, not even remotely close to how real soldiers saluted, "my friends call me Mac."

"OK Mac," said Jack.

And he was a trooper? He had to be mid to late thirties and no way would he be in the regiment at that age and still be a trooper, their equivalent to a Private soldier. He picked up his tea and blew at the mug's lip. "Aah! A brew, NATO standard, lovely stuff."

No it wasn't - every one that had ever lived the life or lived with someone that had knew that 'NATO standard' was tea or coffee with milk and two sugars, his was 'a Julie Andrews' (white nun) but he started again, "Got any food?"

"Not much," I chipped in, "we might be able to let you have a few things to take with you."

"Can't I stay here?"

"Not really mate," I said, "We've only got two rooms and we barely have enough food for the two of us."

"You've got fucking shed loads of food!" he shouted pointing the gun back at me again, "I've checked around." He slurped his tea and it was evidently too hot for that kind of thing, "I set up an Op and watched you last night and today! I saw that fuckin' deer you carried in!"

He said 'Op'. What he meant was 'Oh-Pee', two letters rather than a word and short for 'observation post', he'd read the right books but hadn't heard the term being used it seemed.

"Most of it is still curing," I said, "we can only hunt so much before we reduce the stock levels to the point they can't reproduce, then we starve."

"Yeah... yeah well..." said Trooper Maguire, "you've got food and I'm fucking staying here for my share."

"Why?" said Jack, with the kind of fury that the girl she was impersonating, my sister, would have shown.

"Because..." he said, "Because..."

"Because you've got a machine gun?"

"I... I represent the government!" he snapped, waving the SA80 like it was a ballot paper, "Defence support of the civil authorities mate, I'm entitled!"

DSCA was American, the BBC news had talked of MACA -- Military Assistance to the Civil Authorities.

"So if you're representing the government why aren't you still at Chartwell protecting the cabinet?"

The man caught that,

"You said Chequers before?" said Mac as if he had tumbled we were on to him.

"Chequers or Chartwell, why are you no longer there guarding the cabinet?" she snapped.

He paused for too long and he knew it.

"None... none of your fucking business that's why!" he snapped back sighting along the top of the rifle at her as if that would scare us more than the point blank aiming he'd been using previously.

"All right Mac," I said with my hands raised again, "Look, see it from our perspective, you turn up here with your machine gun and start telling us we have to share our few resources with you. Why us? Surely staying on camp with your company would have been a far better option."

This was another plant by me, the Regiment didn't have companies, it had squadrons.

"Yeah well," he took a deep sigh, "things haven't been the same since... since your Dad left like."

"My Dad left almost three years ago."

"Yeah, and it's all gone down the shitter since!"

"Where did you serve with him," I said with a smile and a suggestion of real interest. I'd known lots of my Dad's colleagues, mostly officers and a few senior NCO's but I still didn't want to let this man know that I knew he was talking out of his arse quite yet.

"The Det in Ireland, Iraq, Afghan of course, Sierra Leone, what a bloody shoot-up that was!"

The man had pretty much quoted the list from the blurb on the inside cover of Dad's biography. Dad hadn't been involved in the famous engagement with the West Side Boys in Sierra Leone but was there as an advisor to their security forces after it.

I reached out and got the copy of Dad's book I'd shown to Jack five weeks before to confirm my bona fide with her. I flicked it open to the two sections with the numbered photographs that were still sat in another plastic box over in my studio. I handed it across with a smile open on the second set of pictures and the grinning faces with black letter boxes across the top halves of their faces.

Mac looked at the photos with a smile,

"Ah a great bunch of lads," he said with a look a real pride, "Finest soldiers I ever served with, miss them all."

"So have you left now?" I said.

"No!" he said quickly, realising his mistake, "the company sergeant major just issued us with rations, weapons and ammo and sent us out to scout around, report back in on the general situation like." He ducked and dived his head around to emphasise this.

He'd obviously thought of a reason why he was no longer looking after the Cabinet at Chequers, or was it Chartwell - he didn't seem to know that that Regiment didn't have company sergeant majors...

"Oh," I said, "was that Ronnie?" I said, meaning Dad's old mate Squadron Sergeant Major Ronnie Regan, recently retired and working for the Foreign Office as a travelling security consultant at British Embassies around the globe.

"Who?"

I pointed to a picture of the huge man that used to bounce me on his knee twenty years before,

"Him."

"Oh him," said Mac trying hard now as to whether he should commit himself to knowing this man that I evidently knew, "no not him."

"He used to be B company," I said. He wasn't of course, he had actually been in charge of 'G' Squadron, being a Welsh Guardsman, but I wanted this dickhead to commit another lie.

"No, I was 'C' company," he said proudly.

Perfect, as any soldier knew there wasn't a 'C' Squadron or company for that matter.

I guessed he'd watched 'Bravo Two Zero' and 'The One That Got Away' on the TV, might even had read the books, and at some point would claim to know Andy, Dinger, Chris, Baz, Spaz, Beano, Deano, Rusty, Dusty, Ginger, Chalky, Doc, Sneezy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey and the rest of the team. What a twat.

A twat, but a twat with an assault rifle that could empty that 30 round magazine in a shade under five seconds and blow Jack and I into very small bits once he decided that our house and all of its goodies were of much more use to him once we were both dead.

Once I was dead at least, my gorgeous companion still had certain services she could offer him after all. I was now very pleased that her beautiful and curvaceous body was hidden under all of my clothing to large for her.

"OK then," I said, "if you stay, you'll need to pull your weight. If you've been watching us then you'll know we're out at first light foraging for food, checking our traps and all that kind of thing. Being Sass," I said it long-hand again seeing as he had, "you'll know how to do that of course."

"'Course," he said as if such a thing was obvious.

"OK then," I said adopting the tone that my Dad had always used with the soldiers he was around, "we'll have a meal tonight, but remember what we eat tomorrow night we need to replace tomorrow morning."

That was straight out of a section in the 'Wildfoods' bit of our survival manual and I wanted to see if 'Mac' reacted to that. He didn't.

I cooked him some deer liver with the last of the wild garlic and some bread from our breadmaker because I wanted our visitor to know that just because 'Deana' was a girl, she wasn't the domestic help around the place.

I think he must have had the same opinion of liver as me but ate it anyway -- he must have been hungry as he wolfed it down like he hadn't eaten in days.

The cake she'd cooked was on the worktop so I took it out of the tin and cut a few slices.

"Nice," said Mac, "Give us another bit, thicker than the last if you don't mind."

"Sorry Mac," I said, "Everything is rationed mate, you can have some more tomorrow."

I could see that he was most unhappy about this and was looking from the now re-covered cake sat on the worktop to his green and black assault rifle. In this weird one-act play he was the soldier with the gun, he was the man that said what was going to happen, he was in charge and if he wanted cake he'd fucking have it.

Jack glared at him and it was enough, he sat and messed around with his rifle and as he did, even I knew that he barely knew what he was doing with it.

"About time you cleaned it isn't it?" I said from my armchair by the unlit fire reading my book.

"Cleaned it this morning," he said, "ROP!"

I desperately wanted to say "ROP (restriction of privileges) is a punishment - don't you mean SOP as in 'standard operating procedure'?" but thought better of it. The last thing I wanted this fucking idiot to do was realise that I'd seen straight through him for what he was and he'd just take me outside and shoot me.

No, we both needed to play along for a bit longer, what to do...

What

To

Do...

"I'm off to bed Jim," said Jack, "Up early tomorrow."

"OK sis," I said as I so often did with the real Deana, "hang on, can I get a clean shirt out of your cupboard?"

"Yeah," she said quite simply and I stood and walked into the double room pulled open the drawer and took a clean T-shirt and stepping back to the door indicating the latch on the lock that would secure the room from the inside.

I threw my clean shirt on the bed and by the time I heard the locking 'clunk' that years before had told my sister and I that Mum and Dad wanted some 'privacy', Mac was up and looking at what was going on.

"What's that?" he said hearing the noise as I stepped in his way throwing my T-shirt on the bed that Jack had slept in for two weeks before, but thankfully still made and tidy.

"What's what?"

"That noise," he said looking at the door, "that clunk."

"Deana locking her bedroom door I expect."

"Why?"

"Well, there's a strange man in her house with a machine gun insisting that's invited himself to stay and is going to take what he wants, why do you think she might have locked the door?"

"I'm... I won't..."

"Mate, you've already told us that you're staying here whether we like it or not and will be sharing our food. That's why my big sister is locking her bedroom door Mac."

He looked actually quite shocked by that, as if someone thinking he might take advantage of pretty young girl was an insult to his chivalry and the code of the super-soldier.

"I wouldn't..." he gulped.

"You wouldn't what? Take advantage of a pretty young girl - in the same way you wouldn't walk into someone's house and just take over the place because you've got a machine gun and they haven't I suppose?"

"I'm gonna pull my weight!" he said, but still holding up the rifle by its pistol grip so I didn't forget he had it.