1
Hill In Action
Hill and his chaps were pinned down behind a sort of sand dune or something. Dirt dune? Whatever, there were a lot of them scattered around in these parts. The stupid thing was, one decent shot at that bloody Iraqi tank and they’d be home free. Well, with a bit of mopping up. Comparatively speaking. Poor blasted Corporal Stringer had copped a nasty one and of course there wasn’t a medic within five hundred miles: they were all back at the forward base camp with the Yank generals’ aides, reporting back to the Yank generals way, way back at— Yeah. Hill in person had shot the poor bastard full of morphine and he was out of it, but—
Then another one came whistling over the sand and blew Corporal Stringer, young Gregg, and poor bloody Sergeant Donovan, who was due to get out of it for good and all in two months’ time, to Kingdom Fucking Come. Hill couldn’t have said afterwards how or why he did it, but he grabbed a grenade launcher off young Jarrett, who was just crouching there gaping at the ruddy great crater where the other three had been, stood up with it, mounted the dirt dune or whatever, stepped forward to the edge of it—the chaps meanwhile shrieking: “Sir! Hey! Major! Geddown!” and such-like—and lobbed a lovely one, up in a perfect arc and right into the fucking thing’s open lid— And threw himself off the dune yelling “Down!” and KABOOM!
“What the bloody Hell did you think you were playing at?” inquired Lieutenant-Colonel Haworth acidly, when it was all over bar the shouting, quite some time later. Post mopping-up and so forth.
“Dunno, Colonel. Sorry, sir,” said Hill, grinning.
“Officers do not stand up with ruddy grenade launchers—was it? Yeah: ruddy grenade launchers, exposing themselves to fire, and shoot fucking Iraqi tanks!” noted the Colonel, quite loudly.
“Nossir,” agreed Hill, grinning. “We’d run out of anti-tank ammo some time since and actually, sir, the fucking Iraqis had shot up our nice anti-tank gun, as well, sir.”
“You can drop that, Hill,” he said heavily.
“Yessir!”
“And for the Lord’s sake stop sirring me! And sit down, this isn’t a reprimand, you benighted ass.”
“Sorry, Colin,” said Hill, grinning. “Thought it might’ve been. Um, prefer to stand, if it’s all the same—”
“You’re going home,” said his commanding officer with a sigh.
“It’s only a flesh—“
“You’re taking that bumful of shrapnel HOME!” said Lieutenant-Colonel Haworth, quite loudly.
“Colin, for Christ’s sake! It barely grazed me,” said Hill feebly.
“You’re due for leave in any case. Get out of my sight before I commit something ’orrible. You, probably,” he said with a reluctant smile.
Grinning, Hill got.
Which was all very well and good in its way. They shoved him in hospital for a bit but after repeated penicillin jabs and a certain amount of tutting and re-stitching, he was deemed fit, the bloody quack, one of those medical types that thought they were funny, going so far as to give him the address of a plastic surgeon who could restore that buttock to the perfect rounded smoothness of the other one. Harley Street, ye gods. Hill went round there on his leave just to see if it had all been a huge joke but by Jesus, there was his brass plate, large as life and twice, as Colin would have said, as ’orrible: “Mr James Pugh, FRCS, Call Me God,” etcetera. He didn’t go in: he’d already proved that the scarred bum, which had only been a flesh wound, was not a deterrent to such as Nurse Julie Taylor, Nurse Dianne McLeod, and Sister Jeanette Simpson, on the one and more medical hand, or to Lacey Standish, Jane Barton-Payne, and Georgina, Lady Amberbrook, on the other or more visiting-the-wounded-soldier hand. So on the whole he didn’t think it’d be worth the time and agony. Not to say, what Mr James Pugh presumably charged for his services.
Unfortunately when the Army deemed him fit for service again the regiment had finished its stint in the Middle East, there was no other action immediately on the horizon, and he wasn’t even sent back to Colin’s lot, who were stationed in Germany, he was given a lovely desk job at the bloody War Office. He stuck it for a couple of years and then got out for good, bugger pushing papers for the rest of his career! Even square-bashing in Germany’d be preferable. ’Specially since Colin had got his step up— Oh, to fucking Hell with it, he was out of it.
There were lots of lovely jobs a chap with his qualifications could do, of course. Endeavouring to turn sweating conscripts in Africa, South America, Central America or any one of half a dozen other dumps into the semblance of a regular army. Less legitimately but even more lucratively, mercenary duties victimising peasants in Africa, South America, Central America or any one of half a dozen other dumps. Smuggling guns into Africa. Smuggling diamonds out of Africa. Selling perfectly legitimate guns to perfectly legitimate buyers who would then sell them on to the dubious régimes in Afghanistan, any one of a half a dozen African countries, any one of half a dozen Central or South American countries, the Palestinians, Saddam Hussein himself… War-gaming all over Scotland with a pack of corporate cretins that thought—God alone knew why—it was gonna make them better managers. Ditto all over Wales. Ditto all over Yorkshire. Managing a lovely research facility that was designing irradiated ordnance to fuck up only half the world, up and until the other side got hold of it, at which point— Mm. Ta, but no, ta all the same. Even though it did pay very well. Managing a whole section in another lovely establishment that was designing better computer-guided weaponry so as the cretins that only knew flickering images on their computer screens and how to push buttons and had never seen combat could blow up half the— Quite. Recruiting chaps to turn sweating conscripts in Africa, South America, etcetera into the semblance of a regular army. Less legitimately, recruiting chaps for mercenary duties victimising peasants in etcetera. Recruiting chaps to lead corporate war-games all over the British Isles… Leading a trek to Nepal. Leading a trek to, or possibly through, the Serengeti. Leading an expedition to— Where? Oh, look, this was getting ridiculous! Leading off-road vehicle treks to anywhere in the British Isles the would-be off-road-vehicle trekkers were mad enough to want to go. Leading very specific British off-road-vehicle treks in the sand dunes of the French Atlantic coast. Er, well, yeah, he had the sand-dune qualification, true. Honestly! What next?
Managing the logistics for a telly venture into the deepest Central American rainforest was next and at this point Hill told his executive recruitment agency to go fuck themselves. Well, in nicer words—just. Given that they’d assured him he was very lucky to be offered the opportunity.
So he took the one that seemed, on mature consideration, the least likely to get him shot for treason or clapped up in jail for life, the least likely to drive him barking mad before Christmas, the least likely to give him some nasty tropical disease, and the most likely to offer some good, solid exercise in the fresh air without exposing him to anything that called itself a trekker or an off-road vehicle. Daft though it was undoubtedly gonna be.
Hill and his chaps were pinned down behind a sort of heathery hillock or something. There were a lot of them scattered around in these parts. The stupid thing was, one decent shot at the other side and they’d be home free: they only had to rack up one more enemy casualty and—
“What are you doing? Geddown!” he screeched, commanding-officer-wise, as this group’s enfant terrible—ten times more terrible, in fact, than the totality of all the cretins that in eighteen months of corporate war-gaming crap he’d had to get alive and relatively unscathed across this heathery section of Yorkshire—stood up, mounted the hillock or whatever, stepped forward to the edge of it and sat down in clear view of the enemy!
“Why?” the terrible one said insouciantly, producing an item of sustenance that they were strictly forbidden to bring with them and inserting it into the gob. “Thoub ge’hing shob wash hobsheck uh-uh exershise?”
“Stop eating that fucking Mars Bar!” screamed Hill as ten more of the enemy’s shots whistled across the heather, narrowly missing the crouching Blue Group. Fortunately the enemy were rotten shots. Well, so was Blue Group. Well, so were they all, so far, over the past eighteen months. With the possible exception of the corporate war-gamer at present sitting on top of this hillock, who could, for all they knew, be William Tell reincarnated. Had refused point-blank, no pun intended, to fire the thing—right.
Swallowing, the terrible one clarified: “I thought getting shot was the object of the exercise.”
“NO!” screamed the entirety of Blue Group—God, did the cretins not realise the Mick was being taken? “Get down!”
Managing with an heroic effort not to laugh—well, he had, after all, had eighteen months of it, enough to sober anyone up—Hill said in his normal, non-war-gaming tones: “Hattie, get down. You’re spoiling the game for the rest of them.”
“But if they shoot me,” she said with horrid logic, “then I’ll be dead and I won’t be able to spoil the game. I’m hopeless at it, anyway. And I could go back to the camp.”
“And eat Mars Bars, presumably.”
“Or buns,” replied the terrible Hattie placidly, eating Mars Bar what time more red paint grenades whistled harmlessly over her, past her and just generally round her and fell harmlessly on the surrounding dead-looking heather. Or possibly some other dead-looking plant entirely.
“Buns?” croaked Hill in spite of himself.
“I brought some from home.”
There was a sort of stir amongst the obediently crouching Blue Group at this point. Then Long-Nose Corporate Ning-Nong—he did have a name, and Hill might even have remembered it if he’d really, really tried—said grimly: “We were told not to bring food.” –The war-gamers were drawn from several corporate institutions this time, hence the emphasis on the “we.”
Calmly, if thickly, Hattie replied: “Sho were we. Anyone like a bun?”
There was another stir amongst the obediently crouching Blue Group but before any of the weaker brethren could admit they would, Long-Nose Corporate Ning-Nong shouted: “NO! You’re getting us DEMERITS!”
“Yes,” agreed Wiry Lady Exec Number One. –There were five in Blue Group and Hill’s numbering in no wise implied any sort of ranking.
Well, yes, she would have been getting them demerits if Hill had been bothering to note down demerits. Those comfortable old sneakers she was wearing instead of the laced waterproof professional hiking boots their list had said that they had to wear were worth a whole raft of demerits on their own. It was perhaps a trifle unfortunate that the list had neglected to explain exactly how to break in a brand-new pair of hiking boots. Wiry Lady Exec Number Five—one of the weaker of whatever the feminine of brethren was: sisterhood, possibly—one of the weaker of them ones—had already been observed removing a boot, inspecting the damage and tenderly applying inadequate plasters. Several times. Hill had endeavoured to represent to his bosses that advice on breaking in hiking boots should be included along with the list but as they knew it all, this had not gone down at all well. And in fact he was only retaining the job on sufferance. Or because they hadn’t yet been able to find a mug to replace him—quite.
At this moment there were screams of: “You’re DEAD!” from behind a neighbouring hillock and Hattie got up slowly and came down to them, stating happily: “I’m dead.”
Er, well, she had a red splodge on one arm, yes. A red splodge of the glancing sort. But possibly if one could convince oneself that the shot would have gone right through the arm—it was quite a hefty one, that undoubtedly wasn’t the first Mars Bar she’d ever consumed—and through the pink padded anorak she was illegally wearing underneath her list-approved, imitation army surplus camouflage anorak and then through her well-covered rib cage, she might be dead, yeah. But it looked like a flesh wound to him.
“Right,” he said, making a note in his officially-issued computerised so-called “Notepad.” –What happened when the fucking battery gave out and one’s combat group, so-called, was out of reach of battery shops, never clarified. “Can you find your way back to camp?”
“No, but I left a trail of Mars Bars wrappers,” replied the enfant terrible insouciantly.
Trail blazing, however sensible it might have seemed to the unprejudiced mind, was strictly forbidden in these exercises: Blue Group broke into a chorus of indignant gasps, Jesus! It still hadn’t dawned that the woman was taking the Mick, she’d been taking the Mick from the moment she got here— Oh, forget it.
“Weighed down with rocks, were they?” said Hill fairly loudly over the chorus of “That’s against the rules! That’s more demerits! She’s losing us the game!” etcetera going on around them.
“Yeah,” she said, eyeing him drily and producing a rather squashed bun from a leg-pocket of her list-approved, imitation army surplus camouflage trousers. “Wanna bit of bun?”
“No,” said Hill repressively, doing his damnedest not to laugh.
“Anyone else want a bit? I’ve got another one,” she offered.
Stout But Trying Twit—there was always at least one of those in every group and very often several—was almost wavering, and Stout But Trying Only Not So Hard Twit was definitely wavering but given that Wiry Lady Execs Numbers One and Two were glaring viciously and the former was opening her mouth to shout, Hill said quickly: “Buns are against the rules. Certainly for those not dead. Go away, Hattie, they don’t need any more demerits.”
“Their trouble is they take it seriously,” she replied, poker-face, wandering slowly down the track that led back to their camp. Given that at least one and often two Courses a week fought this same soi-disant “campaign” over this very hillock for forty weeks of the year, it was, actually, in the category of beaten track, even though on the maps they were all issued it did not exist.
“HEY!” she shouted from some way down it.
“WHAT?” shouted Hill in reply, ignoring the furious glares and the loud hisses of “Ssh!” and “They’ll hear us!” from Blue Group.
“Shall I make some LUNCH?”
“Do that!” shouted Hill happily, waving, as more shots whistled harmlessly over Blue Group and splattered on the dead-looking heathery stuff.
“Right!” she called, trotting off not very fast. In fact at about the same very, very irritating pace she’d been using throughout this set of fruitless, fuck-witted, pointless open-air exercises which, far from fostering any sort of corporate togetherness, let alone team spirit, were calculated, Hill had now decided, to bring out the very worst in the human psyche. And good on her. She was the only—yes, the one and only—corporate war-gamer who had managed to hold out against the prevailing corporate mind-set in the whole eighteen months he’d been leading the stuff. With or without paint guns.
… “Hullo, again,” he said limply, sitting down very limply beside her quite some hours later.
“Hullo and good evening to you, too. Did they finish it?”
“Yes, yes. They have to finish it before they’re allowed back,” he groaned.
“Really? Ya mean they didn’t have the brains to see that, and get dead and—”
“No,” he groaned. “They never do.”
Hattie collapsed in helpless giggles. Had she perhaps, in addition to those illegal Mars Bars and illegal buns, brought a not only illegal but bound-to-get-you-thrown-off-the-Course bottle with her? No, on the whole he didn’t think— No, scrub that, he was almost sure she must have, but he didn’t think she’d been indulging as of this moment. What she had been doing was sitting here by a roaring fire for hours, stirring—well, it smelled wonderful, whatever it was.
“If I say I’m very, very sorry for all of it, Hattie,” he whispered, “could I possibly have a bowl of that wonderful whatever-it-is?”
“Bullshit, you’re the one that’s running the bloody thing!”
“Yes, but I’m still very, very sorry. In fact, all the sorrier,” he said sadly.
Hattie began ladling out bowls of the wonderful whatever-it-was for the exhausted members of Blue Group and Red Group but said on a brisk note: “You can all have some but first I think you’d better look at their feet.”
“Ugh!” squeaked Hill in horror.
She gave him a dry look. “Yeah. I’ve got some really big pieces of Elastoplast, if you need them. And some proper sterile bandages, the padded sort that you stick on, if they’re really bad. Mr Ames the Apothecary was very sympathetic when I told him what I needed them for.”
“Don’t make rotten jokes like that when I’ve been corporate war-gaming since the fall of Vercingetorix,” he moaned.
“I thought he won?”
“Er—forgotten, actually!” admitted Hill with a laugh. “All right, I’ll look at their bloody feet—I use the word advisedly—and I may take you up on those sterile bandages, I’m running short: this lot’s even worse than they usual—” He stopped, perforce: Hattie had collapsed in giggles again.
“Yeah,” he said feebly when she seemed to be sort of over them. “God, are those carrots in there? Where did they—I never asked,” he said quickly.
“Mr Green the Greengrocer—”
“What are their real names?” said Hill, rather loudly.
“The chemist is Mike Protheroe, he’s quite a nice man except that just because I let him tell me how his wife doesn’t understand him he thinks he’s allowed to put his hand on my—”
“Don’t tell me,” he whispered feebly.
“—bum,” finished Hattie placidly.
Hill got up. “And the greengrocer?”
“Jim Mason,” she said, smiling up at him. “I brought some veggies ’cos some people at work warned me about these bloody team-building jaunts.”
“I see. The only question that remains is, how the devil did you manage to carry it all from HQ?” said Hill limply.
“From the hotel, you mean,” she corrected placidly. “I didn’t. I put it on the minibus.”
All Course Participants were strictly forbidden—strictly forbidden—to use the minibus for any purpose whatsoever unless dying. Hill goggled at her.
“That nice boy that drives it was quite sympathetic. He said it was a load of old cobblers,” she explained.
Nodding feebly, Hill tottered off to get the first-aid kit. The nice boy that drove the minibus was about twenty-five, six-foot-four in his stockinged feet and a dedicated rock climber, in fact he took the rock-climbing section of the Course and, in the eighteen months since Hill had been his longsuffering co-worker, had appeared to take not only it but the entire bloody thing with horrible seriousness!
God, the wonderful stew she’d made contained not only real carrots but real onions! The first real onions he’d tasted since— No, well, not literally in the last eighteen months, but it certainly felt like it! Baked beans mixed with tins of bully beef were the usual level of the Course Participants’ culinary efforts, and the vegetarian ones—of whom there were a-many—even refused to add the bully beef. Hattie had used bully beef and baked beans—well, they were the main sources of protein the bosses provided, she hadn’t had much choice—but she seemed to have added some chunks of garlic sausage and… herbs? Actual herbs?
“Dried thyme and a bit of sage,” she said placidly to his enfeebled enquiry. “You haven’t got a camp oven so I couldn’t make proper damper, so I just did dumplings instead.”
“They’re wonderful!” beamed Stout But Trying Twit round one.
“I’ll shay!” agreed Stout But Trying Only Not So Hard Twit through another.
“Full of carbohydrates,” noted Wiry Lady Exec Number One viciously.
“Yes: carbohydrates give you sustained energy. You’ll need it, Valerie, you’d better have another one,” replied Hattie seriously. Er, was she? Hill eyed her sideways but couldn’t for the life of him tell.
“I’ll have it!” said Stout But Trying Only Not So Hard Twit quickly.
Placidly Hattie awarded him another dumpling.
The morning’s ghastly efforts had, of course, only been the half of it and they were all due for more group tactical manoeuvres this afternoon. Or, an hour back. The keen ones were already leaping to their feet and buckling on their paint guns. This time Blue Group and Red Group had to combine forces and take a ridge. The ridge was quite some distance away and manned, sorry, personed, by Yellow Group and Green Group, who had been rock climbing with young Sam this morning. Red and Blue being due for that tomorrow. Yorkshire was, of course, extensive—and there was plenty of room in which to get lost, as successive Course Participants had more than proved—but in actual fact Northern Venturing Partners was only allowed to shoot people, be it only with paint, over a pretty restricted area of it. That track and them hillocks, up as far as the ridge—quite. Resignedly Hill rounded up— No, he didn’t.
“This sprained ankle,” explained Hattie placidly, sitting back at her ease with her sneakers on and no bandage visible, “will prevent me holding the rest of them back this arvo. You could put that in your Notepad, Hill. Has it got a code for sprained ankle?”
Hill took a deep breath. “Where’s your team spirit?”
Ignoring this entirely, she offered placidly: “I could look after the camp.”
Hill took another deep breath.
“I thought a proper curry might be nice: vegetarian, they probably don’t need any more saturated fat after that bully beef,” she said placidly. “But lentils need to be soaked and then cooked gently for quite a long time. –You have got an awful lot of lentils to use up,” she explained.
Er—yes. This was because so far no Participant had figured out how to cook the bloody things, though a few earnest ones had tried. Boiling them for an hour produced only nasty, gritty little pieces of just-chewable hard tack. Well, not just that. Bitter comments from the starving Course Participants as well, naturally. Team spirit, corporate spirit and just plain spirit tended to wear off after a hard day out on the heathery hillocks.
“Lentils are full of roughage and protein, and if she comes with us,” noted Wiry Lady Exec Number Three grimly, “she’ll hold us all back, like she said.”
Hattie looked mildly up at Hill.
“How many demerits is that, though?” snapped Wiry Lady Exec Number One before he could utter.
He took a deep breath and managed to say: “Given that sprained ankle, Valerie, none.”
“But she hasn’t got—” protested Stout But Trying Twit.
“Shut up, George!” said Hattie with a laugh.
“Yes: shut up, you idiot,” agreed Stout But Trying Only Not So Hard Twit with satisfaction.
“Oh,” he said foolishly.
Taking a very, very deep breath, Hill led them off.
Hours and hours and hours later Red and Blue Groups returned to their camp to be faced with the most marvellous smell and a huge, steaming pot of what could not possibly have anything to do with lentils. Though Hattie claimed it was a lentil curry. And a big pot of brown rice—the bosses provided it, possibly unaware that it took ages to cook and frayed tempers in the process—flavoured with, well, definitely onions. Onions and ambrosia. Course Participants were allowed fresh vegetables with the evening meal when bivouacked on the moors, possibly because in the past a particularly rabid Wiry Lady Exec had threatened to sue Northern Venturing Partners for not providing vitamin C and whatever else was in veg (her ire, funnily enough, not preventing her fucking Hill like a crazed rabbit, she was one of the most enthusiastic Wiry Lady Execs he’d ever had). So there were turnips and cabbages. Hill’s theory was that the bastards got them cheap from a local farmer who grew them for his pigs. Hitherto no Course Participant had ever managed to make either vegetable taste even acceptable, let alone palatable, but Hattie’s two separate and quite distinct dishes were wonderful. The turnip curry was melt-in-the-mouth and the cabbage was still crispish, sweet, and flavoured with something from Olympus. Not an Indian recipe, no, but nobody complained that it didn’t go with the rest of it. Had the error in the past been shoving the two veg in the same pot? On the whole Hill fancied that had only been a contributing factor. Complete lack of all culinary knowledge or ability—quite.
“Where did this come from?” he croaked, tasting the miraculous chutney. Together, Red and Blue were quite a large group. Surely she hadn't brought sufficient bottled chutney for the lot of them? Stout But Trying and Trying Only Not So Hard, to name only two, had helped themselves to positive bowls of it.
“’S’easy,” replied the cook placidly. “You’ve got stacks and stacks of raisins. And plenty of vinegar. –It’s hard to imagine why they provide that, since they won’t give us chips,” she noted detachedly.
“Er—yes. Um, I can see you’ve used raisins, and I presume you brought the spices— Right,” he said, as she nodded, “but what’s the, um, mush? Um, the um, base? So to speak,” he ended feebly, as she appeared to be concentrating on the hand-made flatbreads she was cooking in a huge iron frying-pan that so far no Participant had managed to use without burning whatever was in it and dropping it on someone’s toe.
“Here you go, Keith,” she said, handing a hot flatbread to an eagerly waiting Corporate Git. Talk about team spirit! She deserved a medal: the man was the complete pain in the arse and had alienated everyone else in the entire group not excluding Wiry Lady Execs Numbers Three and Four, who at first had indicated quite clearly that they wouldn’t half mind a bit from that direction. The pan was big enough to hold four: she distributed the other three and popped four more in. “They’re better with just a bit of butter, Jake,” she said to one of the more earnest Corporate Gits. Looking airy, he put a pat of butter on his flatbread. (Participants were allowed butter three times a week. It had good vitamin-type stuff in it. Added to which, there were two rival local supermarkets— Yeah.)
“It’s turnip, of course, Hill,” she said placidly.
“What?” he croaked.
“Turnip. There were loads of them. Isn’t that okay? They weren’t supposed to last us the week, were they?”
“Nuh—uh—I can’t taste it at all,” he said faintly.
“I used the youngest, sweetest ones. Very fresh turnip is lovely, actually. Raw, as well. –Want a chapatti?”
“Oh, of course, that’s their name! I couldn’t for the life of me—Thanks,” he said feebly as she put a pat of butter on a flatbr—er, chapatti, folded it over and rested it neatly on the side of his enamel plate. The bosses had started off with modern plastic plates. Never mind the cretins that had rested them on hot rocks round the fire, or, if using the huts, on the old-fashioned wood-fired stoves, it had only taken one Corporate Git to point out the number of scratches the things had acquired and mention the word “infection”— Quite.
All in all it was one of the most wonderful meals he’d ever had and all it lacked, alas, was the beer to wash it down with. Bottled water. Or very horrid tea made by Participants. Leaders were not allowed to prepare food or drink: doing so fostered team spirit, or whatever shit it was those who had booked in this week’s Participants had told the bosses they wanted fostered.
They were not sleeping out in the open air as such but in tents, on due consideration of the bosses’ giant insurance premiums. Tents were assigned on a gender basis, and funnily enough even though normally there was a great deal of shouting about equal rights and non-discrimination and whatever the other relevant buzz words might be, no-one had ever objected to this discriminatory, sexist practice. Given the number of each sex in this week’s lot, one female had had to be by herself. Or put it like this: there were seven females in the combined Red and Blue Groups, of whom six were Wiry Lady Execs. (Only one of them had ended up in Red Group while the luckless Blues had got five, but that was not discriminatory, that was because Participants drew lots for their groups.) Each tent held three comfortably and four at a pinch. A nasty pinch, given the amount of regulation camping kit, much better camping kit, giant boots, extra giant boots, huge knapsacks, and such-like that your typical Wiry Lady Exec brought with her. There were three tents available for the females. So there you were. Well, there Hattie certainly was, all on her lonesome in a great big tent.
On due consideration Hill went and joined her in it.
“That was a really marvellous meal, Hattie,” he offered meekly.
Hattie was already in her sleeping-bag, sitting up brushing out the long, tangled, curly brown hair that she’d been wearing in a big fat plait. Hill knew, since the hut they’d been in a couple of nights back was unisex, that, never mind that the rest of the group was unisexually kipping in its workmanlike tracksuits or even its camouflage gear, she wore fleecy jammies of the sort that Mr Marks and Mr Sparks provided at a very reasonable price. He could see she was in them now, and this, frankly, was no sort of discouragement at all. Pale blue. Printed with little flowers. The last button visible, which was just above the divide, promisingly strained—Hattie was not a skinny woman.
She eyed him drily. “Yeah. Did you want something?”
Hill gave her his nicest smile: the very one that never failed with Wiry Lady Execs, it was. “Well, chew the fat? Have a sip of something?”
“Bottled water,” she said flatly.
He produced his flask. “Something much nicer,” he said with the smile.
“No, thanks. Push off,” replied Hattie brutally.
Hill’s face fell. He could feel it doing it—what a prat! But he was powerless to stop it. It wasn’t that he had an inflated idea of his own attractions, but in the past he’d more than had his share and several ladies had told him that he was very good-looking, which his mirror told him was a blatant exaggeration, but still. The “sardonic” thing, which he’d also got several times, was closer to it, though why it should provoke admiration, God knew. He was quite tall, at the moment pretty fit, and the features were reasonably regular. Dark grey eyes, an olive-ish skin, and when in their natural state, dark curls, at the moment just starting to grow out from what had been, according to his bosses, a very military style which was what the customers expected. The total effect not completely off-putting. Or so until this instant Hill had naïvely believed.
“Have Valerie. Or Jane. Or Lilias—no, you’ve had her, haven’t you? But you could have her again,” said Hattie very, very sweetly.
Hill, alas, went very, very red.
“And I’m sure Shanna or Janette wouldn’t mind if you had them again. Not to judge by the way they were eyeing you up today, ’specially when you showed Shanna how to really fire a paint gun,” said Hattie detachedly.
“Look—”
“I don’t know that other skinny, fit lady’s name, the one in Red Group, but I’d say she looked keen, too,” she added detachedly.
“Look, for Christ’s sake! I merely—”
“Yeah, ya do a lot of that, don’tcha, Hill?” said Hattie sweetly. “Well, good on ya: if it’s on offer, why not?”
“Well, if you admit that—”
“I’m not a skinny, fit lady, so push off.”
Hill was again very red. “I merely thought you might like a drink and a chat!”
“Bullshit, Hill.” She finished brushing out the hair. Hill watched sadly as she began braiding it up again with an expression of complete placidity. Shit, not even interested in giving him the brush-off! He felt like a—a beetle! No, an ant.
“I feel like an ant,” he said glumly.
“Right, and come one step closer and I’ll squash ya like one. Push—off,” said Hattie—clearly, but still without any evidence of interest or excitement.
“Can’t we at least talk? If I go back to my tent a Corporate Git’ll be absolutely sure to come and tell me how to run the Courses gooder,” he said glumly.
“Serve ya right. No-one was forcing you to go into it, were they? There’s a rubber band over there: you can make yourself useful and grab it for me before you go.”
Feebly he crawled over and fetched it. “How did it get over there?” he said feebly, handing it to her and watching sadly as she operated on the tip of the braid. The hair was really something when it was loose: a great soft curtain, and see, if she was on top, it’d hang down all over—
Hattie was explaining placidly that it had gone sproing, rubber bands did that.
“Right,” he said limply. Relatively limply, considering what he’d just been picturing. Not even voluntarily, really, his mind had just done it on its ownsome. “Um, actually the job was the best of the very bad lot that was on offer,” he ventured meekly.
“Thousands of people in this benighted country haven’t got jobs at all, let alone being offered a choice, and go away!” she replied, becoming animated.
“So you are an Australian?” returned Hill eagerly.
“I don’t see how that proves it. Actually we started off in New Zealand, but we did go to Australia when I was in my teens. Doesn’t the phrase ‘Go away’ still have the meaning here that it did when the ones with a bit of nous emigrated to the Antipodes?” she replied evilly.
Swallowing in spite of himself, Hill admitted: “Probably not. I’m sorry. Um, you mentioned damper at lunchtime and it took me all afternoon to realise what you… Er, yes. Look, before I go, what in Christ’s name is a camp oven?” he said on a desperate note.
She goggled at him. “Eh?”
“You mentioned that at lunchtime, too!”
“I would’ve done, yeah, if I was on about damper. It’s a big iron pot with a lid, a bit like a casserole only bigger and flatter. You put it on the fire and preferably put hot coals on the lid if you’re making damper. –It’s only baking-powder bread, there’s no real reason why it has to have a special name, but then all groups validate themselves with their own vocabularies, don’t they?” She gave him a hard look. “Some more than others, of course. A camp oven makes wonderful curries, too, but the Aussies don’t go in for that, ’cos it’s an Indian way of cooking and they’re brown.” Hill had winced in spite of himself; she gave him an ironic look. “I’m trying to think of how to put it in today’s with-it corporate language. Anticipate your departure with celerity?”
“Sling yer ’ook, ’ud do,” he admitted glumly. “I’m going but I still feel like an ant,” he warned.
“Good. Ta-ta,” said Hattie brutally.
Pouting, Hill went.
On the morrow she wasn’t up early getting them all a delicious breakfast so he had to make do with poisonous Participant-prepared coffee—instant but they still managed to ruin it—revolting Participant-prepared muesli—one degree better than the porridge they always ruined, true—and Participant-burnt wholegrain toast. Then bloody young Sam came and took her lot away for rock climbing, blast! He’d forgotten they were due for that. Glumly he went off to meet Yellow and Green Groups at the appointed rendezvous, to which the timetable dictated they had to orienteer themselves. Those who had hitherto believed, in their non-corporate simplicity, that “orienteer” was not a verb being, of course, wrong.
Naturally they weren’t there. Resignedly he sat down and began to wait for them…
The rest of that day was sheer Hell but as he hadn't expected it to get better he wasn’t disappointed, was he? True, the Wiry Lady Execs with this lot all gave him the eye, but somehow the gilt had worn off that slice of over-dieted, over-exercised, stringily-muscled and nastily depilated wafer-thin gingerbread, and Hill retired to his tent with his flask and his pout.
Next day all groups had to rendezvous at an appointed spot, marked X on their maps, orienteering themselves thereto with a simple compass and without the aid of any Course Leaders. It was up to the groups whether or not they split up into sub-groups for this exercise. They inevitably did so, the extra-keen of course getting there miles before anyone else and claiming the prizes on the strength of it. These were partly credit points—there were credits as well as demerits, at least theoretically—and partly actual prizes. Not lollies—no. The prizes, Hill had decided in self-defence, were the privilege of utilising their recently-acquired rock-climbing skills and getting up that there face of that there cliff. None of them—none—had ever seen through this one. They inevitably rushed to be first up the thing. If you went round the back of the so-called cliff you discovered it was merely the exposed face of a gently sloping hill which you could walk up really easily, but none of them ever did that, that would have required initiative and common sense, two attributes which the rising corporate executive, it had long since dawned, did not possess.
He sat down at the foot of the rock face and prepared for the long, long wait…
“Hullo,” said Hattie mildly.
He jumped, and gasped. “What are you doing here?” There were no corporate orienteerers in sight, and, he verified, peering dopily at his watch, none due for at least two hours, yet.
She sat down beside him. “Waiting for the rest of them, by the looks of it. Want a bit of Mars Bar?”
“Um, yes, I wouldn’t mind, thanks,” he admitted feebly. He chewed, swallowed and offered feebly: “You really shouldn’t eat so many of these, you know, they’re terrifically fattening.”
“I don’t usually,” she said placidly. “This is a special treat, see? Because I had to come on a stupid orienteering course with a load of corporate-minded ning-nongs.”
“That’s a good one,” admitted Hill feebly. “I usually just think of them as Corporate Gits.”
“I noticed.”
“Did you?” he said feebly.
“Yeah. –Orienteer isn’t actually a verb,” she noted thoughtfully, chewing.
“Not according to my dictionary, no. In fact, according to my dictionary it isn’t even a word, but then, it dates back to about 1953.”
“Was it second-hand?” asked Hattie with friendly interest.
Why in God’s name were they sitting in the mild sun in the most sheltered spot in Yorkshire wasting their time talking about— Forget it. “Um, no. One of Pa’s.”
“Is that what you call your father?” she said, smiling.
“Er—yes. Sorry, I realise it sounds odd these days.”
“Probably not in your social class,” she replied with her usual placidity.
Hill swallowed hard.
“It’s the accent,” explained Hattie simply.
“Um, is it?” he replied feebly.
“Yes. Maybe the English people don’t notice because they’re used to being bossed around by your lot, but all the accents are new to me. Have you noticed that Jane sounds like that lady that used to do the funny poems? On the radio, mostly, but we saw her once on television and I think she did a tour, as well.”
“Yuh—Uh—Derbyshire, I think. Um, have you been over here long, Hattie?” he ventured.
“Too long,” she said with a sigh. “About eighteen months. My grandmother died and Granddad couldn’t cope on his own, so as all the rest of them were busy buying houses and having sprogs, or in Mum’s case taking off for the Gold Coast with the next sucker, I was appointed to come over here and look after him. She assumed someone with my qualifications would be able to get a job over here, hah, hah.”
“But you must have a job if you came with one of the corporate lots,” he said feebly, not at all sure he was replying to the right point in amongst all this information and beginning to experience a sort of desperate feeling that, actually, he had experienced before in her company. –Not that one, no! ’Nother one. Which didn’t mean that that one had gone away.
“Maybe I just wanted some really impressive extra-curricular activity to put on my CV, though. No,” she said, relenting, “I have got a job but I hate it. Though I admit my qualifications got it for me.”
“What is it? Um, and what are they?” he asked feebly. “Um, sorry. If I may ask?”
“If you may ask? Mate, asking complete strangers really intimate personal questions constitutes normal conversation, Downunder! You got nothing on the average Aussie over the coffee mugs!”
“Oh,” said Hill numbly, not absolutely sure that that wasn’t a reproach.
“P.c. troubleshooting,” she said arcanely.
He was blank for a moment. “Oh! Sorting out the messes they make with their computers—right!”
“Yeah. With and of.”
“So you’re a computer, um—” Blast! He couldn’t think of any word but “expert”, and that sounded so puerile!
“Geek,” said Hattie placidly. “Yes.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” said Hill feebly.
“Computer scientist, so-called. ’Tisn’t a science, it’s only a technology. I’ve always been good with computers and Mum thought I oughta get the piece of paper. It wasn’t really what I wanted to do but I had the marks to get into the course, so I did it.”
“I see. And may I ask what you did want to do?”
“Comparative literature. Until I read the course outline, naturally.”
“And?” said Hill in a hollow voice.
“All the books were in English, for a start.”
He swallowed. “Got it.”
“Yeah. So then it dawned that if you were interested in literature you had to do the language courses and maybe by the time you got to the third year they’d let you read something solid.”
“Uh-huh. We are talking about university, are we?” he said cautiously.
“Yeah,” agreed Hattie on a dry note, “though more than half the Aussie ones are only renamed technical institutes—like what you call polytechs, over here.”
“Mm. So you didn’t do any literature after all?”
“I managed to fit in three years of English, but they wouldn’t let me do any foreign languages with a computer science degree. So I just read the books,” she said with a smile.
“How many languages do you read?” said Hill somewhat faintly.
“Counting English? Um… seven, I suppose.”
“Seven?” he croaked.
Hattie sat up and hugged her knees, looking dreamily out over the view of Yorkshire. “Mm. I started off with Arabic and German. Daniel, Mum’s second, was in the consular service and we lived in Riyadh for quite a while when I was little. I had a German nanny but she had a boyfriend that Mum and Daniel didn’t know about, so a lot of the time I used to go next-door and have lessons with their little boy. Well, I say next-door: technically you went up on the roof and nipped over the back: their house was behind us. They weren’t diplomats, his dad was a well-off banker and he was the only son, his mum couldn’t have any more, so Haroun had nannies and tutors and goodness knows what.” She smiled at him. “A huge electric train set. Everything the heart could desire, poor little kid, except the freedom to go outside and play in the street and be scruffy with the other little boys. –I know that technically Muslims can have four wives, only his dad happened to be in love with his mum, see?”
“Um, yes,” said Hill feebly in response to the information overload. “I see: so you would have learned Arabic with him, Hattie?”
“Yes. Well, off the servants, too, but I learned to read it with Haroun. I know huge chunks of the Qur’an off by heart, too.”
“Go on, then, recite a bit.”
“It’s funny, but it’s always men that find it difficult to believe me. And you have the cheek to condemn the Eastern cultures as sexist!” She recited something for his sexist ears nonetheless. It sounded genuine, all right.
“We did French as well. His tutor was Lebanese, quite an elderly man, brought up to speak French because his parents’ generation considered it the nice language. Same like the older generations of Vietnamese: the language of cultural domination. Funny, eh?”
“Er, yes. What was he doing in Riyadh?”
“Earning a living. His Beirut apartment building had been blown out from under him some time back, so he shook the dust. I can speak French reasonably well, but with a strong Lebanese accent.—Je parle français assez bien mais j’ai un accent fort libanais. I did belong to a French club for a bit when we lived in Sydney but they were all cultural snobs and I couldn’t hack it.”
“With English, that’s three,” said Hill numbly.
“Four. The German nanny, right? I can’t speak it very well, though I can make myself understood, but I can read it fairly well, I did some at secondary school. We were in Sydney by then: Mum had dumped poor Daniel ’cos his career wasn’t going anywhere—she’s like that—and taken up with an Aussie bloke called Guy. He was quite well off and Mum made him cough up for me to go to St Agatha’s Frightful Academy for Snot-Nosed Young Ladies. They made me do Latin—which I have to admit I really enjoyed, though Mum was quite right, it’s never been of any use to me.”
“Five?”
“Yeah. And Japanese and Chinese: the school thought it was gonna point the way forward to the next millennium or something.”
“Seven,” conceded Hill limply.
“Yes. They were interesting, so I’d’ve gone on with them anyway, but then Mum took up with Ken.” She eyed him drily. “Ken Yamamoto as opposed to Ken Drysdale or Kenny Sullivan. She went terrifically Oriental for a while and we actually spent a year in Japan with him—his dad was very ill so he took a year’s leave of absence from his job in Sydney. I loved it, though mind you, the kids at school gave me a real hard time, not to mention the fact that Japanese secondary schools are all forcing houses, you have to work like stink without being allowed anything approaching original thought.”
“I see,” he said groggily. “Why did the kids at school give you a hard time?”
“Because I was a gaijin, of course, and my spoken Japanese was rotten. Well, it was better than anyone else’s at St Agatha’s, but that wasn’t saying much,” she said detachedly.
“Right,” he agreed weakly. “And when the year was up?”
“Well, Ken’s dad had died and his mum kicked up a terrific fuss at the idea of him going back to Australia, so he gave in and got taken on permanently by the lot he’d been working for in Tokyo and Mum and him had a huge bust-up and we went back to Sydney. Flaming St Agatha’s tried to make me do the year I’d missed but I forced them to give me the exams and got a hundred percent in everything but English—I hadn’t read the books, Australian so-called literature isn’t included in the Japanese curriculum, funnily enough—so they agreed to let me go into what you probably call the Sixth Form, like them. –The rest of the country that’s gone over to Australian terminology refers to it as Year Twelve,” she ended on a sour note.
“Uh-huh. And after a year in a Japanese forcing house did you need to do any actual work?” he asked curiously.
“No. I was bored stiff, so Mum enrolled me in some Adult Ed courses. Looking back, I think she might of lied about my age, but what the heck. Chinese, Arabic and Japanese,” she said, smiling at him. “She muddled up the Chinese ones a bit, I think, so I ended up doing cookery with Mrs Wong and Advanced Mandarin with Mr Wei, but it was great: they were a challenge. And it was really lucky, ’cos then she went off to Tazzie with Jonno Cunningham, so Mrs Wong said I could come and board with them while I went to uni, if I liked!” She beamed at him.
“Presumably you did like,” he said feebly. “And are they Mandarin speakers, too?”
“She is. Well, Mandarin and English: her family’s been in Australia since the gold rush days. He isn’t, he’s from Hong Kong, so her and me used to talk it together. It drove him bats, but too bad: all he ever did all day was sit in the lounge-room ordering her to bring him relays of food—he was retired. And before you say it’s typical of the Chinese male—and I’m not claiming it isn’t—Mr O’Reilly next-door to them and Mr Murray, he was Kirstie Murray’s granddad, she was a friend of mine from school, they were exactly the same! And they were both from the Anglo-Celtic majority.”
“Er—ye-es.”
“Sorry. ‘Anglo-Celtic’ means of British descent: English or Irish, mainly. It’s used a lot in Australia, but I remember being really thrown by it when we first went over there.”
“Yuh—uh—when was that?” he groped.
“Just before my fourteenth birthday.”
“After Riyadh,” he ventured.
“Yeah, a bit after, Hill.”
Hill nodded dazedly. Gee, all he’d done was a few stints in Northern Ireland, Germany, and the Gulf, and various besotted ladies—make that silly and besotted—had told him he’d had a colourful life! “Colourful,” he said with a smile.
“Well, pretty varied, yeah.”
“Mm. Do you still keep up with any of them?” he asked idly.
“What, the colourful people, Hill?” replied Hattie on a snide note.
“I didn’t mean— I only meant, you seem to have moved around so much and, um, been pretty busy… Um, sorry,” he ended lamely.
“No, I am. Of course I do. Me and Haroun write regularly. He corrects my Arabic and I correct his English!” she revealed with a laugh.
“Yuh—uh— He is still in Riyadh? –Right. And the CIA haven’t come down on you for un-American activities?” he croaked.
“ASIO, it’d be back home. Not yet, no. His wife writes, too. She’s lonely, poor girl, there isn’t much to do when you’re the wife of a rich banker—he’s gone into his dad’s business, of course. There’s loads of aunties and cousins and old friends that she visits, but all they do is sit round and compare fashions and talk about their children and their husbands and eat. And she hasn’t even got the dubious compensation of business dinners with the hubby and his ghastly corporate mates, like the Western ones!” she ended with a laugh.
“Right. Not all that much difference between the cultures, really, is there?”
“Nope: we’re still two sexes and believe you me, the Arabs have got nothing on the Anglo-Celtic Aussies when it comes to exclusively male peer groups!” she said cheerfully.
“Er—and you don’t resent it?” he ventured.
“No, ’cos I don’t wanna go down the pub and get boozed with a load of loud-voiced morons that can only talk about football and cars and, if slightly older, the latest model motor-mowers and gas-fired barbies.”
“God. No,” he croaked numbly.
“Though I fully recognise that one should be given the right to,” she said drily.
“Yes. And do you write to Mrs Wong?”
Hattie sighed. “I try to. She makes me write in Chinese characters, it’s awfully hard. I mean, if you’re reading something you’ve got the context to help you, but starting from scratch is a real bugger. So I usually end up writing platitudes. Though she lets me send her recipes in English!” she ended with a laugh.
“I see; so your letters tend to be rather culinary?”
“Very! I write to the Yamamotos, too. Hanae and Yoshiko, they’re Ken’s nieces: they like me to write in English and help them with theirs. But Ken writes to me in Japanese. I try to write back in it, but I don’t always succeed. If he has time he sends me a corrected copy,” she said with a smile.
If Hill had this right, this chap was her mother’s ex—er, ex-boyfriend only, he rather thought—that she hadn’t seen since she was about, um, sixteen, maybe just seventeen? Hill was aware he was goggling at her, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
“I love him,” said Hattie mildly.
Hill blinked.
“Even though him and Mum weren’t together all that long, he was more like a father to me than any of them. He really cared about my education and whether I had the right things to wear to school—that sort of thing. And he used to take me to museums and concerts,” she said with a sigh. “And of course he took us all to the beach and the zoo, and that sort of thing! Me and the twins, Katie and Kieran, and Bri—they’re all a lot younger than me, we’ve got different fathers,” she explained.
“I see,” he said feebly. “So there are four of you?”
“Five. Kenny’s the youngest.”
“Kenny?” said Hill very faintly indeed.
Hattie eyed him drily. “You’re right, conceived when Mum’s campaign to get Ken to marry her was in full swing. He would have, he’s very uxorious, but her divorce hadn’t come through by the time we took off for Tokyo, and then of course when we got there she found she couldn’t hack his mum or the Japanese way of life. Which didn’t strike me as all that different from ours, except the flats were much smaller. His mum wasn’t old-fashioned, she didn’t wear kimonos or make her own turnip pickle—though I admit his old grandma did, boy was that a culture shock! She lived in a small country town. She was really kind to us kids but refused even to speak to mum and had three neighbours’ granddaughters lined up for Ken as possible candidates. Mind you, Hanae let on to us that she’d always refused to speak to his wife, too.”
“So he was divorced?”
“No, a widower. His son was grown up,” she said, smiling at him.
Hill didn’t know why but he’d sort of envisaged this Ken Yamamoto as a much younger man. “Oh,” he said limply.
“I suppose your parents are due for their fiftieth wedding anniversary,” said Hattie on a dry note.
What? How old did she imagine he was, for God’s sake? “Not quite. My older sister’s thirty-five. Coming up for their thirty-seventh,” he replied grimly
Instead of conceding her error or apologising abjectly for implying he was pushing fifty, or anything, the maddening Hattie merely replied calmly: “There you are, then.”
“Look, my brother’s divorced, half my uncles and aunts are divorced and most of my cousins ditto!” said Hill rather loudly.
Hattie smiled a little. “Mm.”
“Very well, I’ve got it written all over me that I don’t come from a broken home, or, today’s norm!” he said loudly.
“You have, sort of, yeah.”
“I don’t see how anything I’ve said or done this week can possibly have indicated that!”
“I know. Want a few peanuts? They’re salted,” she offered.
Resignedly Hill let her give him a handful of salted peanuts.
After quite some time—possibly the salt was stimulating his numbed brain—it came back to him that she’d never answered—
“How did you get here? And this time, don’t lead me off on a wild goose chase down the byways of your colourful family history!” he said rather loudly.
“You’re the one that asked all the questions.”
“Just don’t!”
“I wasn’t,” she said mildly. “I got here on the minibus, Sam dropped me off.”
Hill sighed. “I might have known.”
“Well, yeah, ya might of: how else could I have got here in the time except by flying?”
“Yeah, yeah. Have you done one thing on this bloody Course you were supposed to?”
“No. Not if that includes doing it with the Leader, Hill.”
Alas and alack, Hill had gone, very, very, very red. Deep puce, was what he felt it was. Like his Uncle Hubert, who was very fond of port. And cognac. And whisk—that sort of red.
“Don’t be a total tit! Not that!”
“Still no,” she replied calmly.
“No. Just answer me one more thing and then I’ll shut up forever,” he sighed.
“Yeah?”
“When you came on as totally inept and then just stood back and watched as three Corporate Gits and two frighteningly competent Wiry Lady Execs rushed to show you how to put up a tent proper, incidentally putting it up for you—”
“On purpose,” she interrupted kindly. “That It?”
“Mm.”
“Good.” Hattie stared placidly at the wide Yorkshirescape…
After quite some time Hill, who had been staring at her profile—she had a very nice, neat nose—ventured: “’Tis lovely, isn’t it?”
“Thought you promised to shut up forever?”
Sighing, Hill shut up.
Next chapter:
https://theprojectmanager-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/04/hill-on-hols.html