Chapter 7

Despite being in the Combined Cadet Force at school and then the Officer Training Corp at Cambridge Andrew had never taken his involvement to its natural conclusion. Could he kill a man? Being a solder, even an engineering soldier meant being able to shoot his rifle at other human beings and kill them. Maybe at a subconscious level he had thought about it but given his ability to overthink things, it was surprising that he had never spent any time thinking about it.

Despite having no idea whether he could deliberately kill a man, Andrew stood and watched as the man lying in front of him choked on his own vomit. He had heard the initial heaves, seen some of the vomit round his mouth, and finally watched as he struggled for a breath that never came and his face turned red before he died in front of Andrew, vomit round his mouth and even traces round his nose. Andrew continued to look at him for several moments before turning and walking quietly away.

The final training weekend of the OTC year was at Stanford as usual. The final weekend was a mish-mash of a whole variety of training, basically cramming in all the remaining aptitude tests so that the cadets were deemed to be notionally competent. As a Junior Under Officer cadet Andrew was continuing to be assessed on leadership and command and spent a lot of the Saturday working on preparing for the final exercise that he would have to sit in third term. There was a lot of small group training with experienced NCOs and officers. Andrew had not seen any of the new cadets during the day. Stanford was busy that weekend, with several reserve formations there as well as the East Midlands OTC. When he returned to the camp at the end of the day there was a tense air to the place and it appeared that words had been exchanged between different platoons and companies, handbags at ten paces. They were Cambridge UOTC not the fucking SAS. He thought nothing of it and sat and chatted to Jack, Matt and Rollie as usual.

Although the mouthing off and pathetic posturing did not result in a fight, it did result in a series of drinking contests between Cambridge and East Midlands OTCs and some Royal Corps of Transport reservists. All of this was happening in the little town of Brandon, just outside the camp, and Andrew had been careful to avoid getting dragged into it. He found out later that there were Americans in the bars as well, from the US Air Force bases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall. The disagreement and the resulting drinking contest had no bearing other than that a lot of the Company returned to camp blind drunk. Now this was the British Army, such behaviour was positively encouraged, or so it seemed. So there was a lot of stumbling around as the cadets returned, much throwing up in the bathroom and generally the barracks was a drunken mess. Now 5.00 in the morning was going to be painful for all these guys but Andrew’s immediate problem was he needed to pee and was going nowhere near the toilets.

And that is how he discovered Arthur Sherard, rapist and all round piece of shit, lying passed out behind the barracks. Andrew scoffed and shook his head but stepped round Sherard before watering a tree nearby. Turning back Andrew was past him when he heard the sound of the first heaves. At first it was funny, blind drunk and now with puke all over him, but Andrew quickly realised that the vomit was going into Sherard’s airway. As a teenager he had read of both Keith Moon of The Who and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin dying from exactly this, without ever stopping and thinking about the act itself. All of that was a momentary flash, Andrew was standing there looking down at Arthur Sherard and he could save his life. Roll him onto his side or stomach, if the worst came to the worst Andrew could stick his fingers down Sherard’s throat to try and clear his airway.

But he chose not to. Andrew had even taken a couple of steps forward but consciously and deliberately stopped and took a step back. Arthur Sherard thought the rules didn’t apply to him. So Andrew didn’t apply basic decency and humanity back to him. Andrew didn’t walk away, he didn’t hide from what he was doing, he stood and watch a man die in front of him that he could have saved.

Time is meaningless at moments like that. The whole mental concept of time slowing down or standing still, well Andrew felt that. From start to finish it was no more than two minutes and probably barely more than one minute. But if someone came up to him and said that Andrew stood and watched Arthur Sherard die for half an hour, he would have no way of countering them. Realising he was dead Andrew turned and went back to his bunk.

And fell asleep almost immediately.

Sunday training was cancelled after Sherard’s body was discovered. There was an enormous amount of hurry up and wait during the day as Military Police interviewed people and tried to determine what had happened. Andrew was never interviewed as his absence and Sherard’s attendance in Brandon eliminated him from involvement. It was not until several weeks later that the result of the autopsy was leaked. Sherard had taken drugs before he went out and it was the combination of drugs and alcohol that ultimately killed him. But all that was for later. Sunday evening they were finally back in Cambridge, even having to run the gauntlet of a TV crew upon their return to the TA Centre.

Andrew had spent the whole day thinking about his actions, or non-actions from the previous night. The previous two weeks repeated in an endless loop. It all seemed so easy, too convenient. An unrepentant rapist received justice even although the law was never involved. There was only one person who could have saved him and Andrew chose to stand and watch him die. Not hide behind a fig leaf of not realising or walking away so that his conscious could be salved. No, Andrew stood three paces away from a man choking on his own vomit, knowing what was happening and knowing that he would die, and choosing to stand and watch it happen. And do you know what troubled him the most? The fact that he wasn’t troubled.

Two weeks earlier Andrew had been unsure how to deal with hearing someone confess to rape and yet be unable to do anything with that information. 14 days later that same man slowly died in front of him and Andrew chose not to help him. So he decided to park it. Mentally put it to one side, knowing that he would revisit that weekend again and again, and get on with his life. Now that was easier said than done but he tried. He explained to Helena that their night of filthy fun would have to be delayed until Wednesday. She was disappointed but when he told her there had been a death on the training weekend she understood.

It was only on the Monday evening that Andrew got his head sorted out and it was seeing an empty bed that did it. A young girl never got a chance to live her life and he was worried about a rapist? On the walk home, Andrew walked deliberately to give him some time to think, he really did just put the incident to one side. It was over, Andrew would have to live with it for the rest of his life, and he needed to concentrate on people worthy of his time and help. That Monday night reinforced the importance of trying to make a difference to even just one child on the cancer ward. Arthur Sherard was gone.

Until the OTC parade on Tuesday. Do you know what the big debate was? Whether to still have the big annual bash that coming Saturday or not. The drinking culture in the Army was, and still is, fearsome and this was just some new cadet who couldn’t handle his drink; the 1980s were enlightened times. The forgone conclusion was that the bash was still on. Did a lot of cadets have reservations and did it seem wildly insensitive? There was some of that but less than you would imagine.

Finally on Wednesday night Helena and Andrew had a long overdue chat about the previous week.

“I can’t believe it has been a week since Abi turned up unexpectedly. I really am sorry for just assuming that you were okay with all of us crammed into your bed. My first threesome!”

Not that Andrew was mad, but it would have been impossible to sustain in the face of such adorability.

“You are our safety net, you realise that, don’t you? First you get Abi to escape from her self-imposed shell; then you pick me back up after Ed fucks me over at Christmas and now this. Do you mind?”

“I think I would deserve to be gelded if I complain about you and Abi naked in my bed but that is the flippant answer. Truthfully, I don’t know what to think about it. At one level I am happy to help, but I was also thinking about that night. I am the safe friend for you both, as you say your safety net. I get the friendship and the sex mixed up as well. We don’t talk about it, probably very deliberately, but we had been quietly exclusive for the majority of the term. Suddenly I am sleeping with you both and it seems like a step back somehow, especially after our talk from ten days ago.”

Helena’s happy face faded as she listened to him.

“I didn’t really think about it that way. I was all caught up in being a liberated and free woman, breaking conventions and being open enough to act that way. Looking at it a week later I can see your point.”

She stopped and looked at him.

“Were we dating Andrew? Suddenly it feels like we were, and I am not sure that I knew.”

A tentative smile came back onto her face.

“No I don’t think it was anything as drastic as that. With you coming to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks I had consciously steered clear of any entanglements. I did not want you to think I was taking you for granted. Not that I have had any of these conversations with you.”

“I see what you mean. You really don’t fuck around with a new woman every week, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Look I wasn’t trying to kill the mood it just caught me by surprise that’s all. I didn’t have to let her come here on Thursday evening.”

“No but there is more to it isn’t there? I told you to fuck her on Thursday night and met you naked at the door on Friday morning.”

Helena was quiet for a moment.

“Ed fucked around behind my back, Abi’s guy did the same thing yet I all but demanded that you fuck Abi. Is it just as simple as trust, knowledge, respect?”

Andrew let Helena work through this, talking out loud. The silence stretched on.

“Last year, when you told me about all the different sex acts you had done I tried to appear cool and calm but I was more than a little intimidated by your sexual knowledge and relaxed attitude to things I barely understood. I think that is what I mean when I say I was trying to be liberated.”

Andrew looked at Helena in surprise.

“You were trying to keep up with me, outdo me?”

“Yes and no. At one level I didn’t care about Abi seeing me naked, seeing Abi naked. That night I had the power, the control. It is a stupid way of thinking about it but I felt it was my generous gesture to let her stay with us. Lying in bed, we were both so tense, unsure what would happen, if anything. And then you fell asleep, as if having two naked women in your bed was commonplace. I was aching for you, it took all my willpower to not play with your dick, especially as it was desperate to be played with.”

She stopped again and her face turned sad.

“I shared my friend, with no thought about the consequences of the act. I don’t imagine I would be so cavalier about my boyfriend or eventually my husband. What does that say about me, about us?”

“We have always been honest with each other. We are not a couple, not now and maybe not ever, at the moment we are friends that fuck a lot. For me, Abi has also been in that category, as you knew. Nothing has changed. I have a group of really close friends here at College, and based on the conversations between us all, we are all working through stuff. For the three of us there is a sexual component to it but it doesn’t alter the fact that you are both my close friends. Justin and Judy are dealing with their separation. Matt and Navya are dealing with the whole different cultures issue. So let’s just let it go. What you did was the spontaneous act of a good friend. Look at this bed. Sure it is longer than standard but it sure as hell isn’t wider. What were the three of us going to get up to? It would have been ‘and the little one said roll over’ and Abi would have been on the floor.”

It took a while for them to get back into the mood but they were both lying naked in his bed and were young and horny. Helena and Andrew were typically a low foreplay couple, knowing that extended foreplay was wasted on them as they were both normally close to the boil. Were they lazy lovers? Andrew didn’t think so, it was more they just knew which buttons to push with each other.

That night, atypically, they took much more time, reassuring each other. They kissed and caressed for a long time. Lying Helena flat on her back Andrew knelt beside her, looking down at her tight, youthful body. He didn’t start out working his way round her body kissing each and every part but as he looked down at her, he just started kissing and nibbling away. Helena’s body was tight but did not have the firmness or definition of someone who worked out. There was a softness to her, across her tummy, not excess weight just a little give to her belly. She didn’t exercise, relying instead on careful eating and a high metabolism to retain her lovely figure. Helena did not have a particular erogenous zone that was the key to unlocking her desire, everything worked but nothing drove her crazy.

Except between her ears. The reason Helena and Andrew jumped straight to fucking was because they knew each other’s triggers. For Andrew it was the looks Helena gave him even before they got to his room. Corrupted innocence was her speciality, the look of pure naïve innocence, the surprise that her desires had betrayed her and the sheer wanton joy of trying to swallow his dick. Helena had told him that for her it was his breath on her neck, coming closer to her ear, the anticipation of what he was going to say. Just as Helena didn’t have to give a fabulous blowjob every time, so Andrew didn’t have to arouse her desires to the maximum every time either. So rather than play with Helena’s nipples or lie between her sweet, slender thighs Andrew flipped her over onto her stomach and lay beside her. From her shoulders to the small of her back he ran his fingertips across her skin. Helena lay, her head turned towards him, wondering what he was going to do, or say, next.

“I wonder what happened to you Helena?”

Andrew’s fingers started to toy with her.

“Did you have to bring Abi to bed so that you could ‘repay’ me? Or are you disappointed in me Helena? That I am not more demanding. We are wild and crazy in bed but is it not enough? Did you just want to be bent over and taken one night? Face down on my desk, your lovely little pink rosebud stretched around me.”

HIs finger started to push against her without yet penetrating. But Helena’s hips were off the bed.

“I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you Helena. Will you let me make it up to you? I will be more demanding of your body. Such a horrible conflict, isn’t it? You don’t want a man to think that way about you, about your body, yet you are lying here trying to push my finger into your arse because that is exactly what you want me to do, isn’t it?”