Once A Pilgrim. James Deegan

man against his will – there’s always a desk job needs doing somewhere – but Skelton had put his own papers in. If he was never going to make sergeant major, and clearly he wasn’t now, then what was the point?

      ‘Probably for the best,’ Carr had said, deadpan, as he sat in his mate’s hospital room. ‘You’d only have ruined the Squadron, anyway.’

      The last thing he’d done in uniform was to attend the funeral of Wayne Rooney. It always upset him to see a flag-draped coffin, adorned with a beige beret, and it was even worse when the guy in question was young.

      Rooney had been just twenty-four, and engaged to his childhood sweetheart.

      But Carr took comfort in the fact that the men who wore that beret accepted the risk that came with it.

      He’d been very glad to know Paul – the dead man’s real Christian name – he told the young man’s mother and fiancée, as the wake got going.

      Glad, too – he didn’t add – that his days of visiting grieving families were over.

      And now here he was, sitting in front of the Commanding Officer in Hereford for his farewell chat.

      It was a bittersweet moment.

      Carr and Mark Topham had been around each other for almost every year of the Scot’s Special Forces career, and they liked and respected each other, despite coming from very different backgrounds.

      Topham had been born into privilege – big house, expensive school, his father a High Court judge – whereas Carr had grown up sharing a bedroom with his brother in a council tenement in Niddrie, the grey, miserable, shitey, arse-end of Edinburgh.

      A welder, his dad, and his mum a school cleaning lady. Hard-working, good and decent people – his mother, in particular, had been a regular at Craigmillar Park Church just across the way – but there’d never been much in the way of luxury. If his dad was scratching around for work, and he often was, then some weeks there’d not been much in the way of food, either.

      Mark Topham’s school friends were all stockbrokers or lawyers or businessmen; off the top of his head, Carr could name half a dozen pals from his own early years who were dead from heroin, or booze, or from looking at the wrong guy in the wrong way in the wrong pub. His best pal from junior school, Kenny Shaw, was currently doing a twenty stretch in Saughton for killing a guy in some stupid gang feud, and Carr knew that he could very easily have ended up alongside him. The very day he’d gone down to the Armed Forces Careers Office in Edinburgh – a fresh-faced teenager, in love with the idea of soldiering – a local ne’er-do-well had collared him outside the chippy and offered him twenty quid to keep a shotgun under his bed for a couple of weeks.

      He’d been tempted, as well: he’d never seen twenty quid in his life. But he’d walked away from it – partly because it just felt wrong, mostly not wanting to upset his mum – and every day he gave thanks for that. The Army had given him discipline and focus, and turned him into a man.

      And now, all those years later, he looked across the desk at Topham, waiting for him to try and twist his arm.

      He wasn’t disappointed.

      ‘You know it’s not too late to change your mind, John,’ he said. ‘What would it take to keep you? Realistically?’

      ‘I’d like to be an operator in a Sabre Squadron again,’ said Carr, knowing he had more chance of levitating. Experience and know-how took you a long way, but there was no substitute for the strength and fitness and aggression that a younger man could bring.

      ‘Yes,’ said Topham, making a church steeple out of his fingers and smiling ruefully. ‘I thought you’d say that. But that’s the one thing we can’t do. Not even for Mad John, I’m sorry to say.’

      Carr smiled despite himself at the nickname, which had followed him round the Regiment for the last fifteen years.

      ‘Of course you cannae,’ he said. ‘But you asked. What else is there? Become an officer? No offence, Mark, but that’s not me.’

      ‘This has been your life for nearly twenty years. Are you sure you want to walk away from it all?’

      Carr looked at the CO for a moment. ‘No, I’m sure I don’t want to. I fucking hate the idea. But it comes to us all, and this is my time. I’m going to walk to the main gate, hand in my pass, and it’s all behind me.’

      ‘I respect that. It’s a shame, but I respect it.’

      Carr smiled. ‘Not to mention, I’ve been offered a job I can’t refuse. Twenty years living in shitholes, getting shot at, blown up, eating compo… It’s time to enjoy life. It disnae last forever. I want the cash.’

      ‘You tight Jock bastard,’ said Topham, shaking his head and grinning.

      Carr laughed. ‘Me, a tight Jock bastard? Here’s you with your stately home, and your polo ponies.’

      ‘Fair one,’ said Topham, with another rueful expression.

      ‘Boss, trust me, I hate it more than you do, but it’s just time to go. At least I can walk out the gate with my head held high, and think about all the guys we knew who didn’t have that option. I beat the clock. Ask young Rooney if he wants to walk out the Camp again. Ask Pete Squire, or Jonny Lawton, or Rick Jones. Ask any of them.’

      ‘True. A lot of good men on that clock.’

      ‘Too many.’

      Mark Topham stared out of the window at a cloudless blue sky. The thump of a helicopter landing on the field outside bounced through the glass.

      ‘Well, you can’t say I didn’t try,’ he said, with a resigned smile. ‘You’ve had a citation submitted for the night in Dora, by the way.’

      Carr raised his eyebrows. ‘Just doing my job,’ he said. ‘It’s not about the medals.’

      ‘Sell it to Ashcroft, then. But joking aside, well done. Richly deserved.’

      ‘Thanks boss. Means a lot.’

      Topham stood up, and Carr followed suit.

      The 22 CO held out a hand. ‘I can honestly say, John, that it has been an enormous pleasure and a singular privilege to serve with you. You’re always welcome here. Godspeed.’

      A slight lump in his throat, and his eyes stinging a little, Carr nodded.

      ‘Aye,’ was all he could manage.

      He strode out of the Commanding Officer’s room into the corridor and towards the exit to the Regimental Headquarters building, where he walked, head down, straight into a tall, slender man in the corridor – a man whose angular appearance belied his considerable tenacity, courage, and intellect.

      Major General Guy de Vere, Director Special Forces, who had arrived a few minutes earlier on the helicopter, for a planning meeting with Mark Topham.

      ‘Christ, John, you nearly took me out,’ said de Vere, when he saw who it was. ‘I understand you’re leaving us?’

      ‘Yeah, that’s me, boss,’ said Carr, shaking the outstretched hand. ‘I’m out the door. Civvie street.’

      ‘Mark couldn’t persuade you?’

      ‘Nah. Sorry.’

      De Vere shook his head. ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘Amicitiae nostrae memoriam something-sempi-something fore.’

      ‘I’ll be honest with you, boss,’ said Carr. ‘I havnae a clue what you just said there.’

      ‘Cicero,’ said de Vere. ‘I hope the memory of our friendship lasts forever.’

      ‘Jesus,’ said Carr. ‘I’m not dying, you know. I only live down the road.’

      Guy de Vere smiled broadly and clapped Carr on the shoulder.

      ‘Tell