CHAPTER 6

MY KENYAN DIARY: CHARLES JAMES

I've needed to do some serious thinking about Elvis and how I feel about him. When I was a young thing a thousand or so years ago, I met a couple of guys who were probably from earlier generations of his large Italian, probably Catholic family. (My breed was Irish Catholicism, which brought a whole lot of its own particular challenges. Even in rural New Zealand, where the potato famine planted lots of "Micks" as my grandfather called them, and himself.) These self-styled Italianate super studs had the advantage of soulful black eyes, were deliciously buff and tanned with their shirts off, knew how to chat us all up and had absolutely no consciences whatsoever. I think more than one or two girls were left literally "holding the baby." I have an instinctive mistrust of the Elvises of the world who are just as capable of hurting their male friends as they are of using the women in their lives.

Fingers and the lads were sitting outside Lane's quarters waiting for me to turn up. Some of the common sense I'd drilled into them over two tours, at long last. Hallelujah! They had called for back- up from one of the other medics in camp when they realised, as soon as Lane came out of the shower, that she was struggling. No way would they let her stay in camp, only the hospital in Mombasa would do, so they called for support from the whole medical team who overrode Lane's insistence that she was fine. Being watched over, bed rest, rehydration through a drip, a quiet room and visitors vetted carefully made more sense to everybody except Lane but in the end she was too traumatised to offer more than a token protest.

"Sorry, Boss. We knew you had a lot to do after the action, so we waited here to tell you where Geo… Lane was. Didn't want you to worry she wasn't in her tent," explained Fingers.

Good thinking. The strategy team needed her to be on the ball as soon as. We all had to pick her brain for details about the bastards who had taken her so we can find them and take them…OUT!

So went to the hospital to see how she was doing. God, she looked weary and pale, though they had her rehydration under control by the time I got there. There was a certain look about her, a kind of incompleteness as if she were not quite all present in her body. I was reminded of how I had felt when I came to in hospital after the emergency surgery on my injured leg. It was a kind of emotional absence, a giving up sort of thing, hard to find the right words, even now. But I know it when I see it, just as Molly saw it and understood I was not there in my entirety.

When finally Smurf had fucked off and my Molly was alone with me, all I had wanted was to touch her and had gripped her hand hard and held on as if to do so gave me a chance to gather myself up. As she touched my face and smoothed my hair back, in some mysterious way I felt my disparate pieces reconnecting and as I began to murmur to her I started to heal. There was not time for much murmurring as the door burst open and the other love of my life, Sam, fell in the door desperate to show me the message inked on his arm.

Then came The Ice Queen. With a chilly half smile she scanned the room and I think she caught on immediately to what was happening to me and to Molly, to us together. For the first time since Rebecca and I had separated, I understood I really was finished with her and another part of me fell into place at last.

But back to Lane…how is it every time I talk or even think about a woman my mind redirects itself to Molly? Immediately I saw Lane I recognised the emotional blank-out in her face. I was worried. My message to her was in two parts. She is an excellent soldier and in the matter just concluded, she had excelled. I am sure that anything other than excellence would not have satisfied her. So I told her how proud of her I was, but also that she must not take the offer of psychological help lightly.

Everything that had hurt her this time would need to be shared and wept over and excoriated. Layers of memory and trauma need to be exposed and abraded, if deep wounds are to heal. Blisters on the heart need to be cleaned and dressed, even if they are not easily visible, just as much as those caused by new army issue boots on our feet. How well I know the healing power of kind, skilful hands on bloodied feet (here is Molly yet again!) and the banter which gives normality to the process. Not for the first time, and it surprises me, for I'm not normally a religious man, I think of the Magdalene, who washed Jesus' torn and weary feet and dried them with her long, lustrous hair. I wonder what words passed between them as she carried out this humble task? I hope she gave him cheek and made him smile, just as Molly did that first time she tended my bleeding, and if I am to believe her, smelly, feet.

I'm rambling here, but I'm allowed to! It's my bloody diary and I can say what I like, can't I?

"Go away, Molly, just for a bit, into the shadows. I'm talking about Lane. You're her mate, you won't mind, will you?" I'm sure she doesn't, but she keeps on disturbing my concentration…

What I desperately wanted Lane to understand that she should tell the psychologist who specialised in supporting army personnel with PTSD, everything, but EVEYTHING she remembered about her capture. This was not me being The Concerned Captain, though I know I looked to be altogether on the surface. This was Charles James, the bullied schoolboy who had become the traumatically wounded soldier. And, God help me, the feelings were the same now, at age twenty- nine as they had been at age seven at public school.

It wasn't until I bought into the idea that I needed to start trusting someone enough to spill all of it, and not just from being shot by Badrai. All of my suppressed guilt and grief over the failure of my marriage surfaced, too, as did other hurts I had successfully buried from my long ago past. My therapy went on for a very long time, until I judged myself ready to start my life again. And ready to give myself fully to my beautiful, kind and patient Molly. Over those months, I discovered a Motor Mouth Molly, who teased and bullied me and pulled and pushed me towards a new life.

I know a lot of Lane's history and her hurts. She IS an excellent soldier, but I sense the pain that lies just below the surface. And she knows I know. And made it clear to me that she wants to close the door on the past and move on. I just tried to get through to her how bloody crucial it will be for her to not hold on to her hurts until they poison her body and her soul. I was so much in danger of that, I wouldn't wish it on any one. Especially someone I respect and admire as much as I do Lane.

So I'm really laying it out for Georgie and out of the corner of my eye, I spy Elvis, looking for all the world like a beaten puppy dog. Leaning on the doorframe like a matinee idol from a crappy sixties rock and roll movie, he's giving her the soulful cocker spaniel eye and I think he's waiting for me to leave. I might be wrong about his intentions but I don't think so. He can swan in, sweep her up in his arms and wait for her to tell him that all is forgiven. He'll probably say, tossing his hair back soulfully, that he knows she didn't mean to hit him in the chopper, it was just a reflex. Once she knows the true reason why he stood her up at their wedding and didn't even have the fucking courage to tell her why he was hurting her so badly and humiliating her in front of all their families and friends, then she'll fall into his arms, tell him she understands and all will be fucking forgiven!

Not even! I asked her if she wanted to see him and she was cuttingly clear about wanting me to tell him to go. Which I did and he went, looking even more like a sad puppy dog. I recognised that by this time I was in a fucking fury with Elvis. Who gave him permission to treat people this way? He was just a spoiled brat who had absolutely no idea what he had done to this beautiful woman who had loved him more than he deserved and who now had other plans for her life. Had he even given her a thought in the last two years, I wondered, up until he read the documentation that told him who he and his SAS buddies were supposed to rescue?

And what about the girl he so casually dumped two years ago? Has he given any thought to how it must have been for her to be pregnant, alone and unable to tell him, the father of her unborn child?

I almost understand now the exquisite revenge Debs took on him, presenting him with Laura on the day he was due to marry someone else. If it weren't for the pain that was caused to so many people, I would incline to thinking "Serve you right." But then again, I'm not a nasty bastard, am I?

I need to do some serious thinking about where I stand with Elvis and our friendship.

I didn't find Episode 3 on YouTube till Saturday and found Captain James needed quite a lot of time to reflect on what had happened before he could write his diary entry this week. It was very busy, so more time is needed for the second entry, hopefully tomorrow.