Surviving When the Lights Went Out

After the Great Randi Black first suggested the 'Thriller' concept I was really struggling for a 'hook', something a bit different.

A few days later I was flicking through Facebook and came across 'The Walter Mitty Hunters Club', a group of veterans that highlight the individuals that pretend to be Paratroopers, Royal Marines, the Special Forces or the French Foreign Legion; although half of them look like they'd fail the medical to get into the British Legion...

Since the birth of Social media the 'Walts' (Stolen Valour' in the US) have been making quite a name for themselves, quietly spreading their bullshit across the internet until challenged.

I grew up in and around the army -- infantry, artillery, engineers, signals, transport, military police, ordnance, chefs -- and there were thousands of them, I never met anyone that was in or related to someone in the special forces.

It always surprises me that hardly any of those glamour stealing 'Bloaters' that appear on the WMHC pages after appearing on Facebook or any of the dating sites ever pretend to have been an ordinary grunter, drop-short, chunkie, bleep, trog, monkey, blanket-stacker or slop-jockey, strange that.

Aaaaaaaanyway, The Hunting Club specialises in outing men and occasionally women who crack on about being SAS airborne sniper commandos and pretend to be war heroes. It is sometimes terribly sad and the WMHC do carry out their due diligence in case the Walt in question has some mental health issues, but generally it's someone that perhaps served but never made it through basic.

The trouble starts when they bash on about the qualifications and medals they have, then wear them on Remembrance Sunday or posted on FB, perhaps forgetting that anything over a campaign medal (Which are all engraved with name, rank and number) is reported through the London Gazette and 'oh, it was all hush-hush' really doesn't cut it. As far as anything airborne goes the group is able to check who has passed through the army parachute course. When given the option to confess their lies, a few do, many just take their pages down. Others threaten to get their mates 'still in the mob' to sort them out.

There was one of these boys that I saw a picture of - a complete twat giving it 101% of "I'm reeeeeeally tough" in the beret he never earned wearing the latest kit snarling into the camera, stood in his living room with his replica/BB gun.

It really got its hooks into me and suddenly we were in the woods and before you could say 'Bulwer-Lytton', it was a dark and stormy night...

The background events behind this story are of course entirely fictitious.

Hopefully.

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There's always been that claim from philosophers that an individual is only ever three missed paydays' away from homelessness and society three days of hunger away from revolution. This was indeed the case.

When it did happen I was fortunate in this respect for my circumstances and my late father's employment.

My Dad was a soldier, one of the best and in his blood; the Son of a Brigadier, Grandson of a Major General, Great-Grandson of another Brigadier. A Duke of York's Royal Military School alumni, his career was never really in doubt. Sponsored through Cambridge, one of the top three in his class at Sandhurst he went straight into my Grandfather's regiment -- in fact all of my paternal male relatives regiment through four generations, two world wars and a whole mess of 'conflicts'.

Dad loved the life and we would follow him around the world (mostly Europe to be honest) on his various postings, in fact I was born in the British Military Hospital in Rinteln, Germany. My big sister and I were 'quarter' or 'pad' brats (a kid that lived in married quarters), albeit officers' padbrats but I never remember complaining about the life.

Eventually my parents bought a house in the Welsh Borders because my father had followed his father into the Special Air Service, initially as a junior officer but finishing as a Squadron Commander. He would occasionally find himself back with his parent battalion of course, but always with his SAS Regiment 'Sabre' parachute wings on display on his various tunics that had so many of the younger soldiers rather in awe of the mythical Captain Hart who was 'away with the regiment'.

Dad would come and go and disappear for long periods and come back. We knew what he did and the danger he was in but big sis and I were both Dukies and boarding at Dad's old school and we never really knew what he was up to most of the time, or ever talked about it.

That happy family life came to an end about three years ago when there was a change in the old man.

What we thought at first was post-traumatic stress (a regular outcome of those doing his job) became the thing that cost him his job, marriage, his house and apparently his sanity. Once promoted to Major the proud and driven soldier already being lined up for the same upper echelon career path taken by his late father as lieutenant colonel and Battalion commander, then staff work, then Horseguards.

But without warning or discussion he just left that career to go into private contract work for some of the richest and most powerful (if rather less respectable and salubrious) people on the planet.

Again, we hardly saw him but he was now being horrendously well paid for it and the money rolled into the bank and Mum paid of the still quite considerable mortgage.

After a short period of imprisonment in the country where he'd been head of security for the recently deposed, ousted but escaped dictator, it seemed his ghosts came home to visit and following his return home to the UK courtesy of Interpol, he exhibited strange behaviour towards us and my Dad, a previously tea-total man left our house and my Mum and was apparently drinking away his nightmares.

Now apparently unemployable he'd been found living rough several times and surviving on the basic equipment he had left from his time in the forces, his beloved belt-kit and bergen rucksack, and was often rumoured to be on Dartmoor, Salisbury Plain, Brecon, the Yorkshire Moors or anywhere betwixt and between having walked from place to place and camped and survived as he went.

He'd been discovered in his 'basha' by an old comrade of his, shocked and stunned to find the now infamous and newsworthy Major Hart, the man that had tested then trained him, looking like a wild mountain man from the Afghan hills and far from the smooth and sartorially elegant Army officer he'd known fifteen years before as a young trooper.

"What the Fuck Jez?" said Squadron Sergeant Major 'Ronnie' Regan looking at the hand-stitch repaired wax cotton jacket and over-trousers his old boss was wearing, and recognised there was something way wrong with his old and now skinny one-time company commander and asked him when he'd last had a good cooked meal and a shower.

Dad grunted,

"Dunno Ronnie, what day is it?"

"Thursday..." said Ronnie.

"No, what day of which month?"

"April... 24th."

"Oh," he said, "24th April... tomorrow is my mother's birthday."

"Well, if that ain't synchronicity raising its unexpected head I don't know what is, get your fucking gear on the truck Boss; shit, shave, shower and shampoo back at the base, then all the fucking beer and steak you can keep down."

Sergeant Major Regan bundled his old friend into the long-wheel-based Land Rover and threw a couple of blankets over him until they arrived at the transit accommodation his troop was using but was temporarily free of the group of soldiers currently being tested and trained.

Dad went into the shower room and shaved off his months of beard growth while Ronnie took his clothes to the adjacent laundry room and threw almost his entire wardrobe into the machine. As that washed and spun it's way to some semblance of normality he rang home to his wife who checked through some paperwork he knew to be in their spare room and found my Mum's phone number and rang it.

Mum was out at a corporate dinner; another army officer, a Captain in the Adjutant Generals Corps, Mum took up her human resources role in civilian life as soon as my sister and I started at The Duke of York's.

"Hello, could I speak to Mrs Jan Hart please?"

"I'm afraid she's out," I said, "Can I take a message?"

"Is that... Jimmy?" said the voice I thought I recognised, surely not.

"Yes," I said, "May I ask who's calling?"

"I'm an old family friend Jimmy, this is Ronnie Regan, was in the Regiment with your Dad..."

"Ronnie!" I called out remembering him with some delight. He was always very funny and with his Military Police Close Protection Officer girlfriend now his wife, he had babysat my sister and I. Larger than life as well as being extremely large, Ronnie was the only person that ever got to call me 'Jimmy', if anyone else did and I would grumble on for hours or days, I preferred James, or the simpler Jim. "How are you?!" I said, hoping to put off the 'Mum and Dad have separated, we haven't seen Dad in months, haven't heard from him since before Christmas' discussion.

"I'm good Jimmy, really good mate... your Dad..." he said with a pause. Shit, this sounded like bad news.

"Yes?"

"It's OK mate," he said and I breathed a sigh of relief, "he's here with me, he's been living rough and looks like death warmed up... Is there... I mean..."

"Tell me where you are," I said, "I'll come and get him." OK, he had left my Mum, my sister and I to go tramping the back roads and by-ways but he was still my Dad and there was something behind his out-of-character behaviour.

I drove all evening and halfway through the night in my car, leaving an innocent note about a fictitious job offer that Mum wouldn't see for two days anyway, then reaching that strange little army base tucked away at the back of an industrial estate in one of the more remote and unforgiving parts of the British Isles our armed forces seem drawn to.

By the time I got there, Dad was shaved, scrubbed, well fed and in his first clean clothes in weeks, some of them courtesy of the quartermaster who knew Dad by reputation at least.

After some very brief but quite jolly chat with my Dad, Ronnie and I managed to convince him into my car and I headed south with almost no idea of where to go next. At a little after eight the next morning with Dad curled up on my backseat sleeping off the huge meal and four tins of beer he'd virtually been bullied into, I rang my Grandmother and explained what was going on.

"Thank God you found him James, and on my Birthday!" she sighed a deep sigh having had a similarly long stretch of not having heard from him other than a Christmas card with a simple 'love Jeremy' and muddy thumb print on it, nothing else. I could hear Grandma pottering around in the background, then coming back to the phone, "can you remember how to get to The Croft James?"

I felt a Buzz just hearing the name.

When we came home for school holidays, we spent many of them in some wonderful houses we knew and loved originally owned by Grandmother's family and now belonging solely to her,

"Just about," I said, after all I'd been there dozens of times as a kid but had never driven there myself, "It's Mid-Wales borders isn't it?" It was one of my all-time favourite places growing up, full of exciting places to go and things to see and Dad and I would camp out in the abundant surrounding woods with a few tins of food and Dad's survival skills he learned and had since taught.

"Have you got a pen?" She said. I didn't but did have a 'Notes' facility on my phone and typed the address Grandma gave me. "When you get there go out into the garden and you should find a stone statue of St Francis of Assisi, the key is under the third hedgehog to the left, your sister used to buy them when you were kids and staying there."

I could remember that, and thanked Grandma, promising I'd ring her as soon as I arrived.

At a bit after lunch I arrived at Hart's Croft having missed the entrance twice. It was, as my mother had always put it, 'at the arse end of nowhere' and the track hadn't been driven along probably in a year. The place was huge and this didn't bode well. I had a real fear it would be horrendously overgrown and I hoped I could find the garden, let alone find the small flat key under a small flatish hedgehog model on the ground next to the big statue.

As Dad snored on, I parked up and headed down the small paved pathway, my happy memories coming back to me when I saw the green front door not changed in the seven or eight years since I'd been there last.

The patch of lawn was still there, and although quite high, did give me a much better relationship as to where the St Francis could be stood.

I saw his head then felt around his feet in the weeds and found the first hedgehog. Grandma had definitely said the third hedgehog. After another few seconds I found it and the key, the morning sun glinting cheerily from the shiny and quite new looking steel, it had been brass before I was sure.

I picked it up and headed back to the front of the house, and the key fitted into the Yale lock. It turned easily.

There was no post because the door didn't have a letter box, and any bills were always sent to Grandma at her place in London.

Other than a faint damp smell of unlived-in houses everywhere, it seemed that all would be well and I walked around and opened curtains and a couple of windows.

While Grandma had said no one had stayed here to her knowledge in at least two years she did have a local couple, The Harris's, that would go along in September every year and do a thorough clean and any necessary maintenance and hack the garden and yard back to its spring shortness. The surrounding agricultural land was rented to adjacent farmers.

But there were some signs that someone had been here and reasonably recently. There were two washed up plates, some cutlery and mugs on the drainer, and a side plate on the table with kitchen paper laid on it. A quick inspection showed a red lipstick 'kiss', I guess the previous tenant had needed to remove a bit of makeup. The fridge rattling into life was the final proof if any was needed, the last thing any occupier was required to do was wipe out the fridge and turn it off leaving the door open.

I checked out the two bedrooms, and in the larger of the two the double bed was made with a duvet still in its cover thrown to one side at a perfect right angle as if the sleeper had just pushed it aside as they rolled out of bed that morning.

Tucked under the duvet was a couple of pairs of panties, both cute and very feminine including the cotton high-cut 'Hello Kitty' short-shorts that I knew from the washing line and laundry room at home. Tucked inside them was a pale green satin string, what my sister always declared 'pubic floss' and too uncomfortable for anything other than wearing short-term under tight jeans, tight dresses or sports clothing where a line would show. Mum was a bit of a fashionista on the quiet but wouldn't have worn these tiny things.

Weird.

I knew that Grandma hadn't been here for more than a day the previous summer when she came down for her annual inspection, so since then I guessed. I went back into the kitchen and opened the still rumbling fridge.

There is was, a half-full plastic two-pint milk bottle with a date of five weeks before. The small freezer compartment had a half full bag of oven chips and the 'opened but folded closed' cardboard packaging of a four pack of veggie-burgers with two missing. Veggie burgers?

That was the answer, my sister Deana had been here. Along with her colour lipstick and Hello Kitty knick's I opened the cupboard and there was a box of Earl Grey tea bags and next to it a box of Waitrose Rooibos Tea bags. Deana was like me and drank Earl Grey.

Deana was an occasional vegetarian, not surprising that the burgers would be there but Red Bush tea? Stranger still Deana had always hated the place, hated it with a passion as she got older in fact -- no shops, a crap TV signal, no Wi-Fi and no boys.

Perhaps my 'career student' sister still studying at a University not thirty miles from here had finally taken a liking to the place seeing as it was free and Mum had recently stopped all but her most necessary requests for money, sending her a Waitrose shopping card that would be topped up every two weeks to enable her eldest child to eat but not get stupid with clothes purchases and partying.

I say career student simply because my lovely older sister had taken a year off after her A' levels then was eventually nagged into applying for a degree by my Dad, settling on advertising and media -- I think because she did so much shopping and loved magazines and the internet.

She did this for a year and decided it wasn't for her and transferred to the University's School of Education with a view to being a teacher.

This lasted until the following February and the school placements happened with real children to work with. That cured my sister of ever wanting to be a schoolteacher.

She spent the rest of that spring term looking at what else she might like to study and she finally settled on, of all things, Land management and Gamekeeping. This she so enjoyed she was now into what would be her sixth university year adding a master's degree in gamekeeping, sponsored by a large land management company Mum worked contracts for occasionally.

There were rumours that Deana had something going on with 'Huw' -- the so far anonymous Wales and Midlands Area Manager that she spoke of occasionally and so quietly to on the phone, twirling her fingers in her hair and giggling.

Well-well, I had the funniest feeling that my lovely sister had probably brought her veggie burgers, her Earl Grey, the teeny-tiny panties she hated so much and her Wales and Midlands boyfriend here for quite a few naughty weekends, judging by the amount of tea bags that had been used from the box of eighty.

Mum and Dad paid for our university education and I was among the few that didn't need to take out a loan. I hadn't been quite so profligate as Deana though and had paid for the luxuries myself during my three years at university working several jobs, including freelance photography and filming work for friends and local papers, once even as bass player (learned the instrument for a rock band at school) duetting with the pianist in a rather posh hotel restaurant before I graduated with a first in photo-journalism.

I was under no pressure from Dad to join the army and had never really wanted to. While he loved the life himself I don't think he wanted it for me, a first in the male line of Hart boys not to join his old Regiment, even my Grandma approved.

Once graduated and living at home I wrote bits and pieces for magazines and newspapers often including the accompanying pictures and did quite nicely considering, and I was waiting to get in some travelling with a couple of friends and photograph and write up a couple of festivals in America, then across to Hawaii for another festival there finishing off the year working in Australia or New Zealand, just to get the whole thing out of my head.

And here I was six months later and I guessed Deana could be due to return any time soon, considering the bed was still made and she'd left non-perishables (except for the milk) behind as well as her undies.

I went back and made up one of the single beds, quickly heading out where Dad was just starting to come round as the sun hit the car and warmed it up.

"What the bloody hell are we doing here?" he yawned.

"Grandma's idea," I said.

"You've told Grandma that I'm here?"

"I said I would try and bring you here," I said with a sigh, Dad could be a proper drama queen some times, "promised I'd ring her and let her know what happened. I can always tell her you've run off into the hills again. She'll believe that here."