Avedissian was growing tired of his love affair with the mat and the NCO was beginning to get on his nerves. He was just too confident and arrogant, although with good reason he had to admit, but perhaps it could be used against him? He staggered to his feet and pretended to be more disorientated than he really was as the man came into him yet again. At the last moment he side-stepped and brought his foot up into the NCO's solar plexus. The man went down and Avedissian was on him, forearm in his throat, fist raised above his face.
That's more like it, sir,' said the man with a smile. 'Coming back, is it?'
Jarvis applauded and said, 'About time too. I thought you were auditioning for a part as a bowling ball.'
On Thursday it was announced that the course would be guaranteed an uninterrupted night's sleep before moving on to 'phase two' of their training. On the strength of that promise Avedissian stayed up past his eight o'clock bedtime and joined Jarvis downstairs in the reading room.
Jarvis put down his book and asked how Avedissian was feeling after five days. Avedissian had to admit that, after the hell of the first two days, things had been improving and he was forced to concede that he felt a lot better than he had done for a long time. 'But you must be bored?' he said.
'Not at all,' replied Jarvis. 'The run-up to an operation is never boring. What is it they say about anticipation being more exciting than realisation?'
‘Then you've been on a mission before?'
'One.'
'Can you tell me?'
'No.'
'Silly question,' conceded Avedissian and Jarvis smiled. 'What can you tell me?' Avedissian asked.
'Just about everything else, I should think. My mother and father split up when I was fourteen and I went to live with an aunt in Cumbria where I suppose I had a pretty uneventful adolescence. I don't think my aunt was ever that fond of me, or I of her if the truth be told, but she did look after me through my school years, and for that I am grateful. Money was tight when I left school so I applied for, and got, a University place under military sponsorship. The Royal Marines paid me a salary while I was a student on condition that I served with them after graduation. It suited both of us.'
'Your aunt must be proud of you.'
'She's dead.'
'Parents?'
‘They're dead too.'
'Wife?' tried Avedissian.
'I'm engaged to a girl I met at university. Annie, she's a biologist, doing a PhD at Edinburgh.'
'You can't see much of each other?'
'It hasn't been too bad. I'm normally stationed at HMS Condor in Arbroath. It's not that far from Edinburgh.'
'Except when you're on holiday in Wales.'
'Quite,' replied Jarvis with a smile.
The major gave a brief introductory talk to the second phase of the course in the library on Friday morning. The key word that kept cropping up, to Avedissian's dismay, was 'survival'. They would be trained to exact a living from the most unforgiving of terrains, he said. Not that many of them would be likely to need such skills, but it was felt by their sponsors that such training would do them good in an all-round sense.
'Does that mean that we are all here for different reasons?' asked Avedissian.
'Why do you ask?'
'Because personally I have no idea what I will be doing when I leave here. Is that the same for everyone?'
The major said, 'It is certainly true that the members of the staff here, myself included, have no notion why any of you are here. If there is any course member who would like to say anything?…' The major looked round the room.
One man said, 'I know why I'm here. I've been appointed assistant and general minder to Admiral Sir John Sharpe at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. There's no great secret about it.'
Another, one of the women, said, 'I'm an army nurse. I hope to go on the combined services expedition to Borneo.'
Two RAF instructors admitted to being there on a refresher course.
'I think that answers your question,' said the major.
It did, but it didn’t help.
Avedissian was convinced that the Welsh mountains had taken a dislike to him, or so it seemed in moments of damp paranoia when he thought that it might never stop raining again. People who lived in houses and ate real food had quickly become a distant sub-species who never in their wildest dreams considered the kind of existence that he and the others were experiencing. A life where hunger and discomfort were the norm, clothes were never properly dry, and feet were never warm. The sole object of each day was to get through it.
Avedissian frequently lost track of time as they roamed the peaks and valleys of the Brecons, like aimless sheep scratching a meagre living from the hillside. Relationships within the group were appraised in terms of new qualities, ability to light fires quickly, success in wood gathering, prowess in rabbit snaring. Avedissian had the personal advantage of having Jarvis at his elbow and took full advantage of this to learn quickly. He had grown to like the Cumbrian for Jarvis always understated his ability and that was the mark of a true professional.
As Avedissian lay in his dug-out trench with its bracken roof canopy he was enjoying the fact that it had actually stopped raining. The ground still smelled wet but the sky was clear and he could see the stars in an unclouded heaven. His cheek noted that the wind had dropped to a gentle breeze. He took off his boots and rubbed his feet. Sheer luxury… and tonight it wasn't even that cold.
It was a night for contemplation, a night for astronomers to work and philosophers to consider. Avedissian was neither but he did consider the course of his life and where it had led him, for one thing the time at Llangern had done was to relax him mentally. He felt able to see things more clearly.
In society's eyes he had failed at two professions and it seemed unlikely that he would be given a chance at a third. His army career had ended in an Irish farmyard when some snot-nosed kid had made himself more important to him than the ambush that he and his platoon had been planning for weeks. Avedissian knew that he should have died that day, but the Irishman had let him live and in the space of a few short seconds had changed his whole way of thinking. He had subsequently resigned his commission and gone to medical school.
Avedissian had enjoyed medical school. The fact that he had been three years older than most of his fellow students had been a help rather than a hindrance in that, with more experience of life, he had been better able to avoid the traditional distractions that face students on their first time away from home. He had worked hard and done well.
His hard work and dedication to the profession he loved had rewarded him with a consultancy at an early age, and with his marriage to Linda contentment had appeared to have been within his grasp. But then came the day when Michael Fielding had been admitted to St Jude's. It had not been a difficult case to diagnose for the brain tumour had been very clear and the fact that it had been sited in an inoperable position had also been beyond doubt. A sad but straightforward case. Avedissian remembered how he had taken the parents into a ward side- room to tell them.
Michael had been their only son and their obvious distress had made it all the more difficult. Somewhere outside a contractor's steam hammer had been busy on the foundations of a new wing for the hospital and on that morning it had seemed like an obscenity. The callous indifference of its thump had punctuated what Avedissian had had to say in all the wrong places.
'He is going to die isn't he?' the woman had asked with brim-full eyes.
'Yes, I'm afraid so.'
'How long?' Her voice had dropped to a whisper as if she were afraid of the words.
‘Two months at most.'
'Will he suffer much pain?'
Avedissian had been unprepared for the question and he had dithered long enough for the woman to see the true answer to her question. He had tried to assure the parents that pain-killing medication would be given.
'But will it work?' the woman had asked.
