Chapter 16: Déjà vu Deux

I managed to get a seat on the night train to Edinburgh; I would have a wait of a couple of hours at Darlington for the Catterick Flyer in the morning but there was no point in hanging about Plaistow. As I sat in my less than luxurious seat I reflected on the past few days, and wondered where it had all gone wrong.

I had arrived home on leave, armoured by my high moral behaviour of being celibate for six months. If that didn't put me on the side of the angels I don't know what would. Miriam and I then began our usual procedure of getting to know each other – in the Biblical sense. We would start off slowly, with minimal touching, feeling and kissing, then gradually, night on night, build up to full on sex, hopefully achieving mutual sexual gratification. This was the usual programme when we had been parted for any length of time. I have mentioned before how it takes Miriam and me some time to get into the rhythm of our bodies, after a spell of no sexual activity between us, although I never have had any problems – well, not enough to worry about – with having very satisfactory sex with females I had only just met. Is that weird or what?

It was like a game of snakes and ladders when it came to having sex with Miriam. I would start off slowly, using my fingers and mouth on her body, then, once securing a foothold – or should that be a toe hold? – on the first rung, I would gradually climb up her ladder of passion, sometimes reaching the heights of sexual ecstasy as in Spain and Warminster, but more often than not merely achieving satisfaction and contentment. Then, for no apparent reason that I could fathom, I would suddenly slide down a snake and be banished from her bed and her minge.
After several months of no phsical communication she would invite me to start visiting; after several meetings, and always at her instigation, she would allow me access to her body, and once again I'd start to climb the ladder.
On this leave things were progressing satisfactorily; I was confidently mounting her ladder when suddenly I stepped on a snake. However, on this occasion I know what snake caused my slide to the bottom – Martin bloody Hodge. If he hadn't come round the house and punched Vivian there would have been no meeting at Lorenzo's; no Louise or the two Serbo-Croat girls. No informing the police, no mug hurled at my head. If those events hadn't happened by now I would be nearly at the summit of Miriam's ladder of love, and who knows, after my six months of abstinence, what further heights we might have achieved. All ruined by that shitehawk Hodge.

It would seem that with Hodge out of the picture all would be well, but I was always amazed how Miriam could switch from loving spouse to hateful shrew in such a short space of time, and for no apparent reason. Although I tended to blame Hodge for Miriam's sudden relapses into shrew mode sometimes he was nowhere to be seen on these occasions, although I had the feeling he was still on the manor and in the vicinity.
Maybe she and I were just not compatible, and yet we had scaled the very heights of passion – no, it was honest to goodness love we both displayed during the Spanish Idyll and later at Warminster. So perhaps it was something like that pair of Hollywood film stars of the 60's and 70's – Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton? They couldn't live with each other, and yet they couldn't live without each other. OK, so no one would ever mistake me for Richard Burton, except for the shagging and drinking, but Miriam could be taken for an Elizabeth Taylor type, with her dark hair, luscious lips, and prominent tits. Although, taking into account our very differeent characters, I think that Liz and Richard had more of a flamboyant, tumultuous and passionate sexual relationship than the rather bland, restrained variety as practised by Miriam and me. I would describe our sex life, when we managed to stay together long enough to have one, as satisfying rather than ecstatic, other than the oft' mentioned Idylls of Spain and Warminster.

How many times had I sat in a train returning to camp before my leave was up, cursing Miriam, and vowing never to return? More times than I care to remember, and yet I always ended up back with her. I could say that this time I would never return, but never say never, and I was in little doubt that eventually she and I would once again resume this peculiar, puzzling, perpetually peripatetic, partnership.
Meantime, I was going to make up for lost opportunities in the shagging stakes. I had a six month backlog of abstinence to attend to, and, as the train rattled and rolled over the junctions outside York I thought of the many happy hours I had spent buried up to my balls in Dilys the Dogger. Unfortunately she had been posted away from Catterick during the Erbs' deployment to Bosnia, but I was sure I would soon find a replacement, either on camp or in Richmond.

The first item on the agenda of the newly formed company – Dipping Dewey's Dick Unlimited – would be to cunt hunt a top class shag bunny. The company maintains a no smoking policy, but other than that all candidates will be judged purely on their ability; regardless of religion, ethnic origin, age (within reason), height (ditto), weight (ditto), football club affiliation (bar any teams south of the river or north of Watford -- or west of Brentford) or gender (provided they are all female). I had made the choice of a future fuck partner as wide as possible because Catterick Camp has many horny and randy males, but very few avaiable horny and randy females. Richmond, the nearest town to Catterick, had been stripped of nubile totty by the proximity of the camp, unless you are tempted by jail bait, which I'm not. I know – don't knock it until you've tried it. Well the same could be said for suicide, and after cleaning the remains of Neddy Claypole off the platoon office walls I will pass on that as well.
As it happened I needn't have bothered setting out any parameters for my next full time fuck partner, as one dropped, unsolicited, into my lap.

It may be just a cliché that the British live, move, and have their being by the consumption of tea, but the British Army certainly does, and as 2i/c of the section it was my job to run the section tea swindle. I collected a couple of quid from each member per week and bought the makings. I didn't actually make the tea myself as Chaz Bowyer had been a brickies' mate before joining the army, and as everyone knows the best cup of tea in the world is brewed on a building site. The first skill a brickies' mate learns is the arcane secrets of building-site tea brewing – which requires an enamelled bucket – and makes the Japanese Tea Ceremony look pedestrian.
I was in the NAAFI supermarket buying a month's supply of tea and sugar, and was getting my money out, ready to pay at the cash desk, when the checkout girl said. "Hi, Dave. Ready to redeem your rain check yet?" It took me a moment to recognise her, and to remember her name. It was the bird who I had the knee trembler with, when on leave in Plaistow after Miriam's parents were killed in a car crash.

"Karen! What are you doing here?"
She smiled, quite a sexy one at that. "I'm off duty in ten minutes, wait for me in the car park and I'll tell you – everything."
With that she checked my purchases, gave me a wink and I went and waited for her in the car park. She came hurrying out of the store, still buttoning up her coat, exactly ten minutes later. Throwing her arms around my neck she gave me a full on, mouth filling kiss. "I've waited years for that..." she said breathlessly, " ... and for another good fucking."

We walked over to her car as she told me the reason for her to be working behind a check-out till in a NAAFI store in Catterick. I knew she was married, with a kid, when I picked her up in the pub – actually it was she who picked me up – and we had shared a quick frantic fuck against a wall. Her old man had since joined the RAF Regiment, the Rockapes, as they are known, and their depot is at Catterick. Karen was living in a hiring in Richmond, and her husband was on a 6 month detachment to Bosnia, the poor sod.
I should have said, 'nice to see you again Karen. Probably run into you again in the NAAFI', left it at that and walked away from her. Not only was she married to a fellow HM serviceman, on a detachment to that hell hole, but I knew she had at least one sprog, and maybe more since the last time I had seen her. I can only claim the mitigating circumstances of me being without female companionship for 6 months in Bosnia, and precious little since after arriving back in the UK, besides being slightly unbalanced with what I had seen and done in Bosnia. There was also the fact that I'm a fool for a girl who could French kiss like Karen, for I then embarked on a balls out, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, and bugger the consequences, sexual relationship with Karen Walker that held echoes of that which I had had with Ffion Probert.

Karen drove me, one handed, from the supermarket car park to her hiring in Richmond. Her old man was out in Bosnia, her kid was in nursery school, and we had the place to ourselves. We fucked each other's brains out in every room in the house, including the kharzy. I was rampant as a stud stallion and half-crazy with what had happened in Bosnia; Karen was just cock- crazy, so we were a matched pair. I hope her neighbours were either deaf or out of their house, or both, for she shrieked like a banshee as I rammed into her. I knew she was a squirter and a screamer but she really surpassed herself as she redeemed my rain check. Other than that she was nothing like Ffion Probert. I never got that free fall feeling with Karen, but I did get into some new positions, and had love bites in places that even Ffion Probert hadn't reached.

There was no love involved, at least not on my part. Karen Walker was just a fuck as far as I was concerned. A bloody marvellous fuck; a noisy, soaking wet, biting, sucking, scratching, and screaming fuck, and I went back to barracks after a session with her bleeding, satiated, and looking forward to the next occasion, but that was as far as it went.
And what did Karen get from the affair, other than being fucked senseless? Well, she gave me the story of how she had always fancied me, from the time when we ran in the same street gang, but for the life of me I don't ever remember getting a kiss, or even a feel from her, during my street gang days.
She said I had fucked her at least twice when I got back from the Falklands, and it was the best that she'd ever had. I can't remember fucking her; I might have, as I was shagging two or three birds a night at the time, but it was like I said: 'Shag a bird, then get off her and go down the pub with your mates and forget all about her.' I don't recall shagging Karen other than that time after the Hodges' funeral. According to her she had lusted after me for years, and she was adamant she would make a better wife to me than Miriam.

Shagging a married woman with a kid, and her husband doing a detachment in Bosnia, was a disgusting, underhand and totally dishonourable action, and I hated myself for being so contemptible, although that didn't stop me from continuing doing it. I tried to tell Karen how bad I felt; about fucking her brains out while her old man was doing a tour of duty in Bosnia.

"Don't give it another thought. He will be fucking far more more often than what we are, knowing what a randy little sod he is. There are plenty of girls in Bosnia on the game, and he won't mind paying for it." She dismissed my misgivings with a toss of her head, and then with a blow job.
It was true that there were many blank faced, vacant eyed, young girls and women for sale or rent in most parts of Bosnia. They were extremely traumatized females, who had seen their husbands, brothers, sons, tortured then murdered in front of them, before being brutally raped by the murderers. A bloke would have to be really desperate for a shag to go with those emotionally dead women, but many squaddies did. The Erbs were fortunate that in Bugs there were willing girls, eager to enjoy what the squaddies had in their trousers, and especially what was in their pockets.