This is the first part of a two-part conclusion to this series, after much enquiry from various people along the lines of 'when are you going to finish the story?' - I thought I had, but enough people obviously didn't think so, so here we go...
Many and varied thanks go to Firefly for her constant encouragement and willingness to point out flaws, inconsistencies and continuity problems, every writer on here needs someone like her! Mike for his support and just for being nice about my obviously deranged scribblings, and my dear wife for putting up with my strange hobbies...
If you like it, please vote for it, if you don't, please tell me why, and as always, the comments that make sense or are self-evidently from sane people are heeded, the loony, sinister and pointlessly rude ones get deleted.
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They say the key to telling a story is to know the ending and work backwards along the story 'til you come to the beginning, but where exactly is the beginning? When my five-times great-grandfather decided that a life as a cotton trader in India was too boring and so bought himself a commission in the East India Company army, beginning the family tradition of military service? Does it begin when my great-great-great grandfather scouted a hillside in Natal in 1879, in a place called Isandlwana, spotted a few Zulu's, and neglected to look over his shoulder at the other 20,000 Zulu warriors bearing down on him and his regiment, the 24th Regiment of Foot? Or is it when my Grandfather went on leave from Brunei and attended that party at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and so met my grandmother for the first time? Or does it maybe start with my birth in the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Woolwich, right next door to my father's posting at the Woolwich Arsenal? All I can figure out for certain is that true beginnings are as difficult to grasp as smoke, you can go cross-eyed trying to work out the exact point a tale really truly begins, and only the story itself makes sense. All I know is that all the men in my family were soldiers, and all of them had died quite messily as soldiers, which seemed to be the other family tradition. Very depressing.
I was born to Juliette and Lawrence Boscombe, Lieutenant-Colonel Boscombe, 7th (Parachute) Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, part of 16 Air Assault Brigade and just as gung –ho as all that implies. Wherever the British Army was deployed, whether as part of NATO peacekeeping, or in Northern Ireland, or as part of the EU security forces, there was my dad, in the thick of it.
My brother Gerry was born two years after me, presumably after a burst of friendliness with my mother on the rare occasions when both my parents were in the same country at the same time.
My mother died in childbirth, leaving Gerry and me in the care of assorted au-pairs and nannies while my father protected democracy in various hotspots around the world. Gerry and I never accompanied him when he was on long deployments, so I never really got to know him as a child, even more so for Gerry. The best we had was the latest carer or, as we got older, one of several boarding schools dotted around the country.
My father wasn't neglectful or anything like that, it was just that he saw his duty to protect Queen and Country as a little more important than bringing up his children, so I spent most of my childhood alone in some boarding school somewhere in the wilds. While I was off in boarding school, Gerry lived with family friends until he too was old enough to go to boarding school. Dad was a good provider, and although we never had a family home, we never lacked for money or things; he was a good father when he managed to forget he was a highly disciplined, single-focussed, military-minded killing machine.
Both Gerry and I took after our mother; we were both blonde, with blue eyes, unlike dad, and while I sometimes looked a little like her, Gerry was the spitting image of our mother, although I needed photographs to see that; I had only the vaguest memories of her. I did get the impression when I actually did meet-up with dad that he somehow blamed Gerry for her death, and as a result, dad had almost nothing to do with him other than provide for him as his responsibility.
As Gerry got older, he began to see it that way too, so he usually avoided dad with the flimsiest of reasons. It eventually got to the point where Gerry had managed to avoid seeing him for almost five years on the trot; he was always "staying with friends" when dad was on leave, and dad never really asked about him.
When I was 11 years old, as the child of a senior officer on deployment, I was sent to a seniors boarding school in Rutland, paid for by the Army, where I met my best and most precious friend, Lucy Manville. We both had the same background; Army brats with the privileges and zero family life that went with it, so we gravitated quite naturally to each other. I found a kindred spirit in Lucy; she hated the army as much as I did, and she hated her father for abandoning her and her younger brother to follow the drum wherever it led him.
When Lucy and I were 16 and our brothers were 14, both our father's were killed while on-deployment; Lucy's father was leading a company in the field against a concentration of Iraqi Republican Guard in a place called Al Zubair in Basra when he stepped on a landmine. He was the most senior British officer killed so far in that whole unholy mess. My dad died when his Chinook helicopter crashed or was shot down, we'll never know which, in Zakho in Northern Iraq. Thankfully there was no blather about how he died a warrior's death blah, blah, blah; the thing about having a warrior's death is, they're usually messy and you end up dead. Not good.
So there we were, four of us stranded in boarding school, four loose pieces left on the board as legacies and casualties of the Army game; Lucy, her gorgeous younger brother, Charlie, Gerry, and me. Charlie was everything Gerry wasn't; tall, jet-black curly hair, emerald eyes, spectacularly good-looking, at 14 already more man than most I'd ever seen, and he contrasted sharply with my thin, short, weedy, four-eyed, nondescript little brother.
I'd inherited some of dad's attitudes toward Gerry; he was almost effeminate, with his fluffy golden hair and his permanently vague expression behind thick pebble glasses, and I hate to admit it, but like dad, I came to blame him for taking my mother away from me. Then came the turning point in our relationship, where I went from disliking him to actively despising him.
One day, when I was just 17, in my last summer holiday before I left school for University, and he was almost 15, I caught him peeking at me.
I was taking a shower at the family friend's we stayed at when summer holidays rolled around, and I happened to notice a small hole low down in the wall, and a quick movement behind it, a shadow as of someone standing there. I twigged what it was, and I knew there was only one other person in the house at that time, Gerry, so I pretended not to notice; if he really was peeking at me, I would give him something to worry about, no fear!
I moved to the vanity and turned on the taps to mask any sound I might make, and eased the door open, slipping out into the corridor and sneaking up to the room next to the bathroom. Luckily I hadn't changed yet, so the little mole-rat wasn't going to get any free eyeful's today! I looked in, and sure enough, there he was, standing next to the hole in the wall adjoining the bathroom, obviously hoping for an eyeful. He was so intent on his disgusting little hobby that he never even heard or noticed me slip into the room.
I clicked my fingers, and as he snapped upright, a look of confusion on his pasty little face, I kicked him as hard as I could right where it would teach him the hardest lesson. He keeled over, gasping for breath as he clutched himself.
I leaned down and grabbed his ear.
"That's for perving on me. If I ever catch you doing anything like that again, I'm reporting you to the police, do you understand me, Gerry Boscombe?"
