Chapter 2

Andrew knew looking at his life that it came across as without conflict, both in the way that he walked away from a lot of conflict but also somehow skated through life without a care in the world. The first was true, the remnants of old Andrew maybe, as he tended not to get into conflict but rather walk away from it. What started as a way to deal with Rowan had become his default approach. Thinking about Rowan and the family, he was having doubts about that course of action after his trip home to Edinburgh, but he also never went looking for a fight. Other than his teenage trouble with authority figures, and he thought most of that was justified, Andrew tended to be even-keeled. He knew he had a temper but it was only over two or three very specific things, Faith and Leslie before, and probably Suzanne now as well. He also wasn’t marked, at least not yet. He was not a loud mouth or a braggart, and also wasn’t a brown nose either. Both OTC and hockey were large groups of guys, the group that Andrew had issues dealing with while at school, so he tried to stay part of the group and not stand out. He thought he was doing better at that at OTC than at hockey, given the issues with Newnham. But Andrew did remember about the bloke Billy at his first Royal Engineer’s camp at Chatham, who decided to be the big man in the barracks and kept picking at him. It took Andrew breaking his nose a couple of days later to get him off his back. That camp had cadets who were going to enlist as regular soldiers as well as people like Andrew who were going to be an officer if they were commissioned, two very different groups, mindsets and experiences. The ‘O’ of the OTC rather gave it away, but now within the OTC there were all sorts of different groups, dynamics and cliques. Different than that camp obviously but distinct now the less. There were four or five groups maybe, probably more. The wannabe warriors, the self-assured toffs, the drinkers, the shaggers and the rest. There may have been more.

The wannabe warriors thought they were in the fucking SAS. Ever since the Iran Embassy siege which had been shown on live TV, SAS troopers abseiling down the building, blowing in the windows and entering guns blazing, everyone wanted to be part of the SAS. The self-assured toffs, although a small group, were loud and obnoxious. Everything bad about private schools, money and privilege distilled down into a group of tossers. The thing that stood out with them, at least to Andrew’s eyes, was the assumed superiority, the assumed right to lead, even when they were useless gits. The drinkers were unsurprisingly in the OTC for the money, remember the cadets were paid to undertake this training, and used the OTC to subside their social life. The British Army had a ferocious drinking culture and being able to function after 8 pints was a sign of a ‘real man’. Dead by 50 from cirrhosis but a real man. The shaggers, just like the drinkers, used the OTC for their own purposes, in this case attracting the percentage of the female population who are attracted to a man in uniform. They were also full of it and acted like wannabe warriors with their exaggerated exploits. The rest of the Company, did it for a bunch of reasons, everyone was probably slightly different. For a lot of them it was keeping options open, most likely for a reserve role but potentially for Sandhurst. The woman’s platoon, they were mainly employed keeping the permanent staff at a safe distance. Just like with Trinity College, women had not been at Sandhurst for long, less than 10 years, and the British Army were still unsure how to deal with them. All the pseudo-scientific guff about unit cohesion was keeping the two sexes pretty segregated.

Now Jack was a borderline shagger, but would have been kicked out that group because he was so crap at it. The other three of them were low key about life, hell Rollie’s dad was a general, he sounded posher than the queen and he could have fitted into the toffs group but instead he was really low-key and wanted to get ahead in life through his own achievements not his dad’s name. Bullies picked on the odd person out, the person out with the group and because the four of them looked out for each other they were left alone. Sure the entire company called him Jock, but it was universal in the Army and was just shorthand. Although oddly Andrew’s three friends called him Mac, Jack’s nickname having stuck.

The first training weekend in the field was about as you would expect. It was January, cold and wet with the ground frozen in the morning. That part of England was a notorious frost hollow, resulting in significantly colder ground temperatures than the surrounding area. The obvious place for the Army to make them camp. The first two training weekends were a jumble of different tasks and skills but there was field craft, hygiene, first aid and map reading covered over the two weekends. This meant the group could assemble a tent, make a fire, dig a toilet and figure out where the hell they were. It was embarrassing how crap they were at some of these basics. Still over the four nights they got themselves organised. Andrew had dug latrines several times at Royal Engineer camps and so knew that part and with minimal fuck ups they passed these first two weekends. Everyone passed eventually, Andrew and his group of friends just weren’t beasted as much as some of the others. Again, just quiet competence. Don’t be a tosser, respect the NCOs and don’t be a nail. Let the hammer fall on someone else. The 2^nd and 3^rd year cadets were having fun being shouty at some of the guys but Andrew wasn’t sure that they were doing themselves any favours. One of the things that he had all four of them do was watch the permanent staff instructors when they had a chance. They were never going to come out and be all warm and fuzzy with you but if you watched them you could tell the behaviour that met with their approval and the kind of thing that raised eyebrows, made them roll their eyes and start the beastings. It was Darwinian, they learned not just from their own mistakes but from those of the other groups.

Back at the TA Centre they got the results, were called crap and pathetic so they didn’t get too full of themselves and were dismissed. A kit bag of wet, smelly, smoky clothes now needed to be dealt with, and quickly, as they were back on parade Tuesday night. Returning to Trinity, the vaguely pacifistic outlook of most of the students meant that the weekends away ‘playing soldiers’ were generally not commented on. Only Pedro expressed an interest and that tended to be when he and Andrew were alone. It wasn’t quite as isolating as being a South African but it was not favourably looked on either. So Sunday nights after exercise Andrew would be down in the laundry cleaning his kit in preparation for Tuesday.

But thoughts about parade were wiped away by an emotional mess of a week. It started fine but as Andrew came out of the swimming pool he was face to face with Ron. Andrew had no idea what to say or what to do.

“Let’s talk as we walk to the café.”

Andrew nodded.

“Okay.”

Finally Ron started to talk.

“Why did you come?”

Andrew presumed he meant the funeral.

“I felt I should but I don’t know if I could explain why.”

“I never saw you, the day is just a blank mostly, but a couple of guys on the crew told me that you were there, at the back of the church.”

Andrew waited.

“How do you do it? Go there every week?”

Ron had stopped walking and was looking at him.

“Ron, last Thursday was the five year anniversary of finding out I beat cancer. It was also the day that the girl in the bed next to me found out that her bone marrow transplant had not worked. She was dead 10 days later.”

Ron flinched visibly in front of him.

“It took me until last September to face this, nearly five years.”

Andrew started walking again and Ron walked beside him. Ron’ questions were not about Andrew, it was a middle aged council worker trying to figure out how to face the rest of his life. They kept walking in silence until they approached the café.

“You are alright for a gownie Andrew, you know that.”

High praise indeed. When they entered Peggy’s Ron walked over to the rest of the crew at their normal table and Andrew got his bowl of soup and sat on his own as usual. Peggy watched him but never came over. Andrew was out of there quickly to get back to College in time. He thought about Ron on and off all day, Brian and Mary had a second daughter into which they could pour their love, and he knew that he had been a helpful distraction, especially for Brian that first year. Andrew only hoped that Ron and Dot had the something similar for them. His third day, and second Monday night, at Addenbrooke’s was still quiet and slow-going. There was less energy and although he spoke to a few children, and spent some time with one or two parents, that spark of connection from the autumn was missing.

OTC that term had no nights off, an easy evening where there was less focus and some goofing off. The training syllabus needed to be gone through and so by 10.10 they were weary after a long day at the department followed by three hours of being told they were ‘fucking useless’ by the permanent staff. Now they weren’t wrong, but still. Did that stop them going to Cindies? Exactly. Andrew’s tall guy, jumping the queue trick was getting people seriously pissed off at him, but they had their beers, he had got the first round in and it was someone else’s problem for the rest of the night. Rollie and Andrew stood and scoped the place out as Jack dragged Matt off to be his wingman.

“The eternal optimist, our Jack.”

Wise words from Rollie.

“Would he know what to do if he actually scored?”

It was partly a dig at him but there was an undercurrent of ‘does he have any idea what he is doing?’. Rollie snorted beer out his nose, always a classy move that impresses the ladies.

“Shit Mac, not while I am trying to drink.”

Once he cleaned up Rollie looked at him.

“You know, now that you mention it, has he scored?”

Poor Jack was going to cop it in the neck when he got back. Rollie and Andrew split up and went for a wander through the place, just to see who they knew. Andrew was a lazy shit because he was always spotted but that night he wandered round, saw a few people he recognised but no one to stop and try to chat to. Then Andrew saw Rupashi standing with a couple of other girls, shrugged and thought ‘why not?’. Trying to make small talk in a nightclub is the height of stupidity. Both of the girls with Rupashi were called Susan, there was a lot of Susan’s around at that time, and all three were law students though at different Colleges. Rupashi was quiet at the start but once they were out on the dance floor seemed to relax and warm up. One song quickly became seven or eight and the night passed in a flash. The two Susans had left so they grabbed their coats and headed home. There was no long and winding path that night, it was too miserable for that so they headed past Christ’s and Sidney Sussex on the direct route back to Jesus College.

“Would you like to go out for dinner on Friday night?”

Andrew ventured, entirely unsure about her response. Rupashi looked up at him as they walked and considered her reply.

“Okay, I think that is a good idea. We haven’t really talked much. Where?”

“It is only a five minute walk so why don’t I meet you at your front gate 6.30 and we can decide on food then?”

Rupashi looked like she was warming to the idea and nodded with a nice smile. When they got to her College she was off with a hug and a peck on the cheek. As Andrew was walking back to College he wondered how long it would take for Navya to find out. Hockey on Wednesday night was the most fun and relaxed they had been all term, the issue with Newnham seemed to have been weighing them down. That night the coach started the practice with the good news that the match was set for Saturday March 1^st but even more importantly the Principal of Newnham had dropped any formal complaints.

“Did you know their coach was at that meeting last week McLeod?”

He looked surprised.

“Not a clue, was she the older lady in the corner? I thought she was a post-doc or someone like that?”

“She is, but she is also the coach. You evidently made a sufficient impression that she went to the Principal and told her that it was not another sexist Trinity attack but just some stupid boys.”

“Well that’s all right then!”

They all laughed but the distant but worrying thought of College discipline was now removed. As a result the team drove the coach to despair as nobody was trying at all at practice. Penalty push ups and runs round the field were the price they paid but nobody cared. After practice, those of them over at the main College buildings were walking back and the match itself was discussed.

“How do you think we will do?”

This was the question of the evening. Several of the guys had taken the time to watch the women’s team. Trinity’s women’s team had beaten Newnham 2-1 so the scouting was to see how the 2^nd team would do against the women’s team.

Zach piped up.

“When I have watched them they are quick and agile. They rely heavily on two or three good players, everything goes through them. But nobody has any size. I think all of us are bigger and heavier than anyone on the team and that’s before bigmouth over there.”

He meant Andrew.

“Are they faster than us Zach?”

“Hard to tell, but they just seem more nimble, able to dance about more. None of us are great stick handlers but on one on one wing play I think they will struggle with our size. We should be able to hold them off without too much difficulty. The other thing will be the ref. If we go in for 50:50 balls then we should win most of the time, but the ref might call us for it. You know how some of them love to hear the sound of the whistle, like we all came out to watch them.”