teatime every morning in the dive team. Just about every SB guy who’s in the camp will show up there. It’s a kind of unofficial daily meeting place. Which reminds me. I guess I should tell you some useful phrases you’re gonna have to get to know, such as “the tea’s wet”.’
‘The tea’s wet.’
‘Right. That means the tea is ready.’
Hank nodded. ‘Tea’s wet,’ he said.
‘If you’re lucky you are known as a jammy bastard, as in jam.’
‘Lucky?’
‘A jammy bastard.’
‘Jammy bastard,’ Hank repeated.
‘That’s right. A knobber is like a wanker.’
‘You’re losing me.’
‘Sorry. A wanker is a jerk.’
‘Wanker is a jerk. Gotcha.’
‘And so is knobber.’
‘Knobber, right. And wanker.’
‘Wanker and knobber, right. And a sporny-eyed wazzack . . . ’
‘A sporny what?’
‘That’s team speak - maybe a tad advanced. Forget that for now. Kip means sleep: get some kip - go to sleep.’
‘Kip,’ Hank said.
‘But if you’re a kipper, you’re a stinkin’ two-faced dried fish . . . ’
‘Are there many of these?’ Hank asked.
‘Hundreds.’
‘Oh, boy.’
‘You’ll get ’em,’ Marty assured Hank as he led him into the diving equipment building and to the tea boat where a dozen SBS operatives were already partaking in a hot cuppa.
Kathryn stood outside Rushcombe infant school, a tidy establishment of some four hundred pupils set in the middle of residential Corfe Mullen. She was watching Helen and Janet walk towards the main entrance, each holding the hand of a teacher. Helen looked back and waved. Kathryn returned the wave and smiled but her smile faded as soon as the girls were out of sight.
The children had been very enthusiastic about the whole idea of a strange new school while they ate breakfast that morning, asking Kathryn endless questions. Kathryn had felt quite the opposite about it, however, and had not been able to sleep much the night before. Now that she was alone she felt even worse. It was as if she were without a purpose. Life, or what there was of it, would begin again when she picked up the children in the afternoon.
As she turned to walk back to her car she heard a woman’s voice calling after her.
‘Mrs Munro? Mrs Munro? . . . Kathryn?’
Kathryn stopped and turned around to see a neat, conservatively dressed woman in her mid-thirties beaming a smile and heading towards her energetically.
‘Sorry to shout. I wasn’t sure it was you at first,’ the woman said. ‘I heard you talking to your children before they went into school. We don’t get too many Americans around here. It is Kathryn, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Kathryn said, quite coldly and without a smile.
‘I’m Joan.’ The woman continued to beam and held out a hand.
Kathryn took it limply. ‘Are you a teacher?’ she asked. ‘Oh, God no. Sorry, I should’ve said. I’m the RSM’s wife - RSM of the SBS.That’s regimental sergeant major to you. Gosh, I don’t know what the US Navy’s equivalent would be. Master Chief I think. Anyway, he’s the boss of all the non-commissioned officers. I arranged your accommodation and also the school for the girls.’
Kathryn nodded.‘I see.Well, thank you,’ she said, wondering how she could get away without being obviously rude. The truth was Kathryn was not an impolite person and much as she had convinced herself she did not like these people she could not bring herself to openly show it.
‘That sort of leaves me doing a kind of equivalent job amongst the wives,’ Joan continued enthusiastically. ‘How’s it been, settling in?’ she asked.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Kathryn said, wanting to get away.
‘I would’ve popped round to see you sooner but I thought I’d give you a couple of weeks to find your feet. I know how it is, moving to a new country. Dave - my husband, that is - and I did two years in Australia with the Australian SAS. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’ll seem like you’ve been here ages in just a few months.’
Kathryn wanted to say that it felt like a life sentence already.
‘Don’t worry about your girls. They’ll be fine. I’ve instructed the headmistress to call me, as well as you of course, if they have the slightest difficulty settling in.’
‘That’s very kind,’ Kathryn said, looking over at her car. ‘I should be getting on. I’ve still got a pile of things to do.’
‘Of course . . . Any time I can be of help, please let me know,’ Joan said, following her for a few yards. ‘I just wanted to touch base and introduce myself.’Then remembering something she stopped and reached into her pocket. ‘Oh, this is my phone number. If you need anything at all just call, any time. Perhaps we can get together during the week for tea.’
‘Perhaps,’ Kathryn said, taking the note and forcing one last smile before turning away. ‘Bye.’
‘Bye,’ Joan echoed. She found Kathryn’s reluctance to chat curious, but put it down to shyness and walked away in the opposite direction.
Joan was the first of the enemy to break through Kathryn’s defences and have a conversation with her, brief though it was. Kathryn wished Joan had not been so damned pleasant. In the past two weeks Kathryn had succeeded in avoiding several wives who had tried to make contact. She didn’t answer her phone unless she absolutely knew it was Hank or was expecting a call from the States, and never returned any of several messages she had received inviting her to take tea. Kathryn wished she could be much harder and tell them to their faces that she was not interested in socialising. But it was unnatural for her to be hurtful to a stranger who had done nothing to deserve it, even being born English. In fact she was experiencing an internal conflict, part of her wanting to reconcile this national hatred she had been brain-washed with since childhood. She knew there was some truth to Hank’s accusation that her unhappiness had nothing to do with the English and that it was all down to being away from home and her friends.
She opened the car door and immediately cursed herself as she slammed it and walked around to the other side where the steering wheel was. She wondered how long she would keep doing that.
Hank sat in the Land Tactics Training Team office, his feet stretched out in front of him on a desk. He was dressed in his crisp, ironed, green Navy SEAL fatigues, his name stencilled in bold black letters over his left breast. He was reading a lecture pack, one of a pile of manila folders stacked beside his shiny, black leather calf-length boots. To get a better look at the diagram on an overhead projector transparency he raised it up to the crisp, morning sunlight coming in through the large windows that took up nearly the whole of one wall.The other three windowless walls were covered in various maps and collages ranging over a plethora of military subjects, such as land navigation, booby-traps, explosives formulas and survival techniques. The team was responsible for the training of all things to do with Special Boat Service procedures out of water. Seated at the largest of the three desks, writing a report, was Colour Sergeant Doles; Corporal Bob Clemens sat at his desk by the window reading a
