Chapter 23: A Hello; and a Goodbye

I wasn't really looking forward to life at Bulford Camp, even though I was back with the battalion and my mates. Bulford has a reputation for being a 'bullshit and brass hats' camp; the former being a term for spit and polish, and the latter a term for senior officers. The GOC Southern Area, Harry Ledbetter's father-in-law, was a frequent visitor, as were sundry other brass hats from MoD making periodic inspections, with all the attendant bullshit. One follows the other, but which came first is a matter of conjecture, like the chicken or the egg. Of course, the fact that I was now liable for battalion duties, which I hadn't done during my 2 years at Reading ARO, could have had some bearing on my antipathy towards the place.

After Miriam's contre temps at the Frascetti's resturant I rarely visited Plaistow, no more than once every other month for a weekend. I suppose you could describe my relationship with Miriam as slightly less than cordial but not unfriendly. We never attempted to 'talk our problems through' but always politely asked after each other's health, and how each other's career was progressing. She seemed to have come to terms with the more unpleasant aspect of her job, that of having to make people redundant, and I'm sure she was always most sympathetic and caring when she handed them their cards. I would sleep in the spare bedroom when staying overnight, and to be frank I didn't really mind. Miriam and I were still a married couple but neither of us was anywhere near ready to resume sexual relations.
My mother, of course, gave me her free and unsolicited advice, couched in her own version of 'Toddyism'. "You should just go in 'er bedroom an' get into bed wiv 'er. She's yer wife an' she 'as to allow yer conjugular rights."
I thought if I did ever try to force myself on Miriam then 'jugular' could well be involved—mine.
"Did my father ever try to assert his conjugal rights after you and he had had a row?"
"'E weren't that stupid to try, an' anyway I locked the bedroom door." She smiled to herself in reflection. "An' I dosed 'is tea with senna pod, which kept 'is Khyber Pass on the kharzy an' 'is mind off rumpty pumpty!"
You probably don't need me to translate 'Khyber Pass'?

I had started attending Salisbury College of Further Education while still at Reading. In fact I had already taken and passed the first module of Spanish A level GCSE before being posted to Bulford. The camp was about 15 miles out of Salisbury and I caught the bus in every Tuesday and Friday evening. The journey took as long as the drive from Reading, which is nearly three times a greater distance.
I was lingering over a cup of coffee in the refectory — that's Academia's name for the canteen – killing time until the bus to Bulford Camp left from outside the college. I was actually thinking of Lorna Gordon, and wondering if she and her 'dapper Sapper' Felix were still shagging each other's brains out twice a week, when I heard a female voice behind me say.
"Des! You never did get back in touch with me."
I turned to see a very tasty looking, twenty something female; her tight tee shirt emphasising her jutting tits; a short skirt doing the same for her long shapely legs, and with an attractive face that I half remembered.
She laughed. "If you've forgotten the afternoon we shared I'll be mortified."
It was Mandy's friend from Aldershot – the sixteen year old who had well and truly shagged me at Wurzel's wedding.
"Debbie!" Thank God I had recalled her name. "What are you doing here? How are you?"
She stepped into me, wound her arms around my neck and gave me a full on, mouth filling kiss with her tongue. If I had momentarily forgotten her face I certainly remembered her kissing ability.
I got back my breath, and she sat down next to me and we caught up on what had been happening to each other.
Debbie had gone to Imperial College, London, reading Chemistry and Biology, and was now a Dietician at Salisbury Royal Infirmary. She still kept in touch with Mandy, Wurzel and Cindy, and had known that I had been posted to Bulford. Debbie had only just started attending Salisbury College, in fact this evening was the first lesson of the business administration course in which she had enrolled.
She leaned across to me, and I smelled her fragrance, and felt the warmth and weight of her breasts on my arm. Her breath fanned my cheek, and I was getting a hard on remembering the last time we had met. "I am so glad to bump into you again, Des. I know that over the last couple of years you've been to see Alan in Aldershot, but never at the same time when I was home from college. So what have you been up to?"
I gave her a brief, very brief and bowdlerised, version of my life over the last 6 years.
"Have you still got that posh charity organizer as your squeeze?"
I told her that Pippa Goddard had gone to Durham and was now married.
"Got any other female entanglements at the moment?"
I admitted I was married, but separated.
"Good..."she said, giving me a swift kiss, " ... you and I have a lot of shagging to catch up on — let's get at it!"
I missed the last bus back to Bulford that evening, but Debbie, bless her, drove me back to camp the next morning. The night had been a continuation of the last time we had indulged in sexual activity; to wit, energetic, enthusiastic, athletic and inventive fucking — and Debbie could still snog for England.

During the next twelve months Debbie Carter and I made up for all the shagging we had missed out on over time — and six years is a powerful lot of shagging time to catch up on. I spent the Christmas of 1996 with her, and a very merry time we had of it. She gave me a mobile phone, plus some very intensive shagging, for the festive season, and I gave her the best cunnilingus she'd ever experienced – or so she said – and some very expensive, very sexy, Harvey Nicholls silk lingerie, which was another present to myself when Debs did her saucy strip tease routine before a shagging session.

Bulford Camp was in a poor reception area for mobile phone signals, often with no signal at all. I rarely carried my mobile phone with me when on schemes out on the Plain, or on guard, and Debs got in the habit of texting me, and hoped that I would be able to pick up the message sometime during the day.
It was at the beginning of February of 1997, and I had just got back to my billet from a route march when I picked up my mobile and saw that Debs had left a text message about an hour earlier.
'Call me. Urgent.'
I rang her from the NAAFI canteen land line as I couldn't get a strong enough signal on my mobile. I could hear from her voice that she had been crying. "Alan's dead, Des. Mandy called to tell me a couple of hours ago, and I'm on my way to Aldershot now. Can you get away?"
For a moment I had to think who 'Alan' was. Wurzel had never given his regimental name to Mandy or Cindy, and they always referred to him as Alan or Al.
"I'll leave as soon as I get off duty, about eighteen – about six o'clock. What happened?"
"He was involved in traffic accident, according to Mandy, but she didn't have the full details. Cindy rang her, practically incoherent, earlier this morning. Mandy was on her way from Oxford when she called me."
I hadn't yet taken in the news that Wurzel was dead; hell, it was only a couple of weeks ago that I had been in Aldershot having a pint with him.
Debbie was still speaking. "I must go, Des. I'll see you at Cindy's place. I'm sorry to be the one to break the sad news; we all know how close you two were."
She hung up, and I went to see if I could cadge a lift to Aldershot from the motor transport section – there were always vehicles going back and forth between the two places.