‘Like?’
‘Like the right kind of kids. Bright. Sassy. On-line.’
‘Poor?’
‘Poor?’ He echoed the word. ‘You want to talk poor? Serious poor?’
He ran through the statistics, the bare minima on which these families had to survive. By themselves, the figures meant very little (I hadn’t a clue how many groceries $93 worth of food stamps would buy for a week) but I could tell by his voice that he was excited and that was enough for me. What I’d seen of Everett in New York I’d liked a great deal. I could trust this man. He had integrity, and the way he was talking about the kids proved it. Big Duane. Skinny Calvin. And a little dynamo known as The Mouth who, he’d bet serious money, would nail the Brits to the wall.
I was scribbling notes to myself while he talked. Mention of Portsmouth had triggered one or two thoughts of my own. Maybe Everett was showing us the way. Maybe we were heading up a blind alley by restricting ourselves to London. Why not look elsewhere? Why not, for that matter, try our own Portsmouth?
The call to Everett over, I phoned Gary. He was on the payroll now, waiting at home in Ross-on-Wye until I came up with a masterplan.
‘What about Portsmouth?’ I suggested. ‘Why don’t we look there?’
I explained about Everett. He’d already settled on Portsmouth, Virginia. Twinning the two cities would be clever. I knew our own Portsmouth from my Petersfield days and I was certain it had exactly the right profile.
‘It’s big,’ I told Gary. ‘And it’s poor. And it’s full of high-rise council estates. It’s bloody rough, too. How about it?’
Gary and I met next morning at Portsmouth and Southsea station. The heat wave was over and a thin drizzle cloaked the surrounding tower blocks. They looked grim and forbidding, gaunt echoes of my undergraduate video, and the group of crop-haired truants loitering by the taxi rank broadened my grin. The place was perfect. I knew it already.
I’d arranged to meet a women from Social Services. Later, we’d be talking to the city council PR people. Before we got on the train for London I wanted Pompey - as the locals call it - in the bag.
Our Social Services contact turned out to be a rangy Essex University graduate called Sarah. She was very bright and - I sensed - very ambitious. She had lots of front-line experience with problem kids and I think my pitch on the phone must have fired her up because she took us at once to an area near the naval dockyard. Portsea, she told us, had always been a slum, home for the poorest families and the toughest kids. Lately, the local authority had been spending a fortune tarting up the acres of council housing and even in the rain the place looked half-decent, but there wasn’t a budget big enough to wipe the poverty off the faces of the kids we met.
They looked, in a word, excluded. They seemed to come from another planet, another age. Their trainers were old. The bottoms of their jeans were frayed. They looked shabby, and neglected, and - best of all - deeply pissed off. Sarah had bribed half a dozen of them into joining us for lunch at a community centre. They sat around the table, silent at first but increasingly vocal once we’d established what we were about. It was Gary, naturally, who set the pace. He told them a bit about his days in the SAS, and described one or two of the operations he’d been on, operating behind enemy lines in the Falklands, stalking suspected terrorists in Belfast, and finally gearing up for a high-altitude parachute drop behind Iraqi lines after the invasion of Kuwait. It was the latter adventure that really broke the ice. One of the kids had been reading Bravo Two Zero, the Andy McNab book, and the realisation that Gary came from the same mould was quite enough for him.
‘Fucking well hard,’ he told his mates, with an approving nod.
That single comment seemed to do the trick. The rest of the lunch hour they spent trying to find ways they could use Gary to sort out the hated Scummers, rival football fans from Southampton, the next city west along the coast. When I pointed out that the Home Run opposition would be coming from across the Atlantic they took no notice, and by two o’clock the Scummers fate was sealed. Gary would sort them some Semtex. And then they’d blow the bastards away.
Gary and I were still laughing when we turned up at the council offices to meet the PR people. Sarah was still with us and she briefed them on progress to date. Portsea seemed to have taken our fancy. She thought there’d be no shortage of volunteers. The training period would take place during the summer holidays and she didn’t foresee any problems with parental consents. Most of the kids, in any case, would be over sixteen and if there were any younger than that then she suspected that their mothers would be only too pleased to get them off their hands. The PR people, both ex-journalists, obviously thought it was Christmas. An hour’s prime-time TV exposure had fallen into the city’s lap and we set off on another tour, this time with a view to showing us the nicer bits.
As I’ve said, I already knew Portsmouth but I wasn’t prepared for the way the city had changed since I’d last had a proper look round. Over the last couple of years, thanks to a string of commemorative occasions, Pompey had put itself well and truly on the map. The world’s media had descended for the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, and weeks later the city had hosted a stage of the Tour de France. A brand new university had supplanted the old Poly and the naval dockyard now boasted the finest collection of historical ships in the world. Everywhere we looked, there were fabulous pictures to brighten the documentary bits of Home Run and what was especially pleasing were the historical links with the States. Emigrants had sailed from Portsmouth, back in the nineteenth century, and elements of the US fleet - Virginia-based - still made regular visits.
On the train going back to London, Gary and I settled down with a half-bottle of Scotch and a milk jug full of water from the buffet car. I knew the day had been a knockout but I wanted to be sure.
‘You’re OK about the kids?’ I asked him.
‘They’re great. As great as we’ll get. Vicious little bastards. Absolutely bloody perfect.’
‘So how do we crack the training?’
This was a problem. Brendan was still banging on about lifting the odd day here and there, stitching together a month’s induction, but Gary - even more than me - knew that was crazy. What he had to build was a sense of esprit, a sense of belonging, and to do that he had to prise our kids out of Pompey and take them somewhere wild and remote where they could test themselves against some pretty heavy physical odds.
‘Anywhere in mind?’
‘Skye,’ Gary grunted.’ The Cuillins.’
The Western Isles, it turned out, had long been Gary’s favourite playground. He’d holidayed there as a kid and returned years later with a bunch of mates to tackle some of the more formidable peaks. The Cuillin range offered some of the toughest rockfaces in Europe and over his third glass of Scotch Gary confided that his first taste of one of them - a monster called Am Basteir - had literally shaped the rest of his life. After that, he said, he’d been addicted to physical risk. Thus his decision to join the army. And thus, a little later, the months of savage training that had finally led him into the SAS. The way he put it, that nod of quiet satisfaction, was the closest I’d yet come to pinning down exactly what it was that lay at the heart of Home Run. By taking these kids, and pitting them against themselves, we’d be showing thousands of others just what might be possible.
I tackled Brendan about the training schedule that same night. We hadn’t seen each other for days. I told him about Portsea, and about our conversation over cold pizza in the community centre. He didn’t like what he heard.
‘Why Portsmouth ? Why not here ? London ?’
I told him about Everett. That simply compounded the problem.
‘He’s not using Washington kids?’
‘No, I just told you. He’s out on the coast. Portsmouth, Virginia. Suburb of Norfolk. And he’s thrilled about it.’
‘But we agreed capital cities.’
<
br /> ‘No, we didn’t.’
‘Excuse me, I think we did.’
We were sitting in a restaurant round the corner from the office, a Greek place that served excellent moussaka. Brendan had barely touched his. I poured him another glass of retsina.
‘Portsmouth’s fine,’ I assured him. ‘And Gary’s happy, too. It’ll work. I know it’ll work.’
I could see Brendan wasn’t convinced. I decided to go back to the training issue but there were problems there too.
‘Skye’s out of the question.’ He dismissed it with a shake of his head. ‘Too bloody far. Too bloody expensive.’
‘Expensive?’ I was beginning to get angry. ‘I thought you’d lined up all this backing? I thought we had money coming out of our ears?’
‘Pledges,’ he said. ‘We have pledges. It’s not bankable. Not yet.’
‘Then borrow,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what banks are for?’
Brendan caught the taunt in my voice and I could tell at once that he didn’t like it. Money was his department. I belonged in the Creatives cage. I reached for his hand, giving it a little squeeze. No point screwing the boss and not using the leverage.
‘Say we make it three weeks.’
‘Where?’
‘Skye.’
‘No.’
‘Where else then?’
‘Fuck knows. Salisbury Plain. Isle of Wight. Somewhere handy. Somewhere cheaper.’
He withdrew his hand and emptied his glass at a single gulp. To do that with retsina you’ve got to be seriously drunk or seriously upset. Brendan wasn’t drunk.
‘What’s the matter?’
He looked away, shaking his head.
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Please.’
He summoned a chilly smile and then signalled the waiter for the bill. I looked at the remains of his moussaka. Dessert would have been nice.
‘Is there a real problem?’ I tried to sound as sympathetic as I could.
‘With what?’
‘The money. The budget.’
I should have anticipated his reaction. Asking Brendan a question like that after banging on for the last couple of minutes was like questioning his manhood. He got to his feet and pushed the chair back. He scribbled a signature on the Access chit and then headed for the door. I didn’t move. Through the window, I could see him wrestling furiously with the car keys. Seconds later, the Mercedes had gone.
I caught up with him at home in De Beauvoir Square. He was lying full-length on the sofa, his eyes closed, listening to the record I’d bought him when he returned that time from Australia. I circled the living room, turning off lights, then I settled on the carpet beside the half-empty bottle of Glenlivet, my back against the sofa. His hand found mine.
‘He’s brilliant,’ he murmured. ‘You have to admit it.’
I listened to Charlie Parker for a while. Saxophones had never turned me on but now wasn’t the time to admit it.
‘I never told you why I bought it.’ I glanced up at him. ‘I bought it to say thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For you,’ I kissed his hand. ‘And for Home Run.’
‘Fuck Home Run.’
‘For you, then.’
He held my hand tight. We listened to the music. Finally he got up on one elbow. I could smell the whisky on his breath.
‘I mean it about Home Run,’ he said. ‘It’s not important. It shouldn’t…’ he made a loose, flapping motion with his hand, ‘… come between us.’
‘I agree.’
I smiled up at him. I was going to get to Skye after all. I knew it. Tonight, tomorrow, next week, Brendan was going to say yes.
‘Let’s forget it.’ I said, ‘We can talk about it some other time.’
He gazed down at me, saying nothing, and I fought the temptation to join him on the sofa. That could come later. And doubtless would.
‘I love you,’ he said at last. ‘It’s important you know that.’
‘I do.’
‘And believe it.’
‘I do.’
He nodded, as if the question had somehow been directed at himself, then began to trace the outlines of my face with a single moistened finger, the way kids make a pattern in the condensation on cold glass. It was something he occasionally did in bed, after we’d made love. I trapped his finger in my mouth, and sucked it softly.
‘I’m dead serious,’ he said. ‘I sometimes don’t think I tell you often enough, you know. Maybe I let other things get in the way.’ He frowned. ‘They won’t, will they?’
‘What?’
‘Get in the way?’
I wondered exactly what he was talking about, what he meant. There was an odd expression on his face, almost supplicatory, and for a second or two it reminded me overwhelmingly of Gilbert. Same need, I thought. Same strange sense of lostness, almost despair.
It was my turn to talk about priorities.
‘Home Run’s important,’ I said gently. ‘But it isn’t this.’
‘What?’
‘Us. It isn’t us.’
He nodded.
‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘And it mustn’t ever be.’
‘No.’
‘You promise?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank Christ for that.’
He lay back on the sofa, his eyes closing again, and for a second or two I had an overwhelming urge to tell him about the baby. Then I wondered whether the news might tip him over again, destroying this closeness between us, and the moment passed. After we’d gone to bed, he said he was sorry about the restaurant, what had happened, the way he’d lost his cool. Three days later, Gary, myself, and Sarah from Portsmouth Social Services were toiling up the southern approaches to Am Basteir.
The recce was a blast. We were on Skye for barely four days yet at the end of it I felt like I’d been shaken inside out, like an old rag doll, then made whole again. That far north, in late June, it hardly got dark at all and we scrambled up peak after peak listening to Gary explaining the way it would be for the kids he’d select.
From his own old maps and notebooks, he’d compiled a list of climbs, ranking them in order of difficulty. At the start of the month, he’d concentrate of basic fitness, getting them up to speed, getting them used to the 6.00 a.m. starts, and cold showers, and all the other delights of life under canvas. With Brendan’s blessing, he’d hired three mates for the month - all ex-SAS - and between them they’d monitor each boy’s progress. Only when they were all, in Gary’s phrase, ‘run in’ would they start on the climbs. By day ten, with luck, they’d be into serious ropework and the final week should see them tackling the peaks that would ask the really hard questions.
In all of this, the emphasis would be on teamwork, and the better I got to know Gary, the more obvious the logic of Skye became. Taming a beast like Am Basteir demanded a level of trust and mutual reliance that literally put your life in the hands of the next guy down the rope. That was the only way Gary wanted it. That was the only way, he said, that his lads would slot the Yanks when it came to the shoot-out on the Brecon Beacons.
On the plane back to Heathrow, we talked about the kids using cameras. I’d be taking a professional crew up to Skye to shoot the training sequences but Gary - as practical as ever - suggested we give two or three of the kids little camcorders. That way, under the kind of physical pressures they’d have to cope with during the game itself, they’d have a chance to grab their own pictures. If the results were as terrible as we expected, then Brendan, bless him, would have to let me solve the coverage problem some other way.
Back in London, over the next week, I kept in daily touch with Gary while he sorted out eighteen lads from Portsea. The six extras he’d decided to recruit i
n case of accidents or homesickness. The latter sounded highly unlikely but as Sarah pointed out, delinquency was often the other face of acute insecurity, and we’d be foolish to accept some of these kids’ toughness at face value.
Between them, our little band had amassed three A4 pages of major and minor convictions. They’d taken to calling themselves ‘The G-Force’, a quiet compliment to Gary, whom they clearly worshipped.
Star of the G-Force was Dean, who at seventeen had five convictions for twocking motor cars without their owners’ consent. His favourite had been a Golf GTI belonging to a local solicitor’s wife. He’d left it upside down in a field of growing wheat after rolling the car at 95 m.p.h. Questioned afterwards, he’d blamed the accident on the police. Had they not pursued him with quite so much vigour, the car - he said - would still be in one piece.
By now, it was mid-July. Two and a half months of non-stop work had left me totally exhausted and I knew the time was coming when I had to take a break. I was doing my best to eat sensibly, and lay off the alcohol, but every article I had time to read about pregnancy seemed to stress how much the experience took out of you. Rest, of course, was the answer, but it was difficult to slip away. The programme seeds we’d planted back in May were beginning to blossom and someone had to be there, day after day, tending our little plot.
Best of all were the kids. Everett’s reports from Virginia were never less than optimistic and Gary, quite out of character, was positively gleeful about the progress of the G-Force. He was getting them together on a regular basis down in Portsmouth, prior to the trip to Skye, and they were basking in the attention that Home Run had attracted from the local media. An early location day in Portsea had given me footage of the lives our kids would be shedding, and these sequences - one could sense already - would provide the benchmarks against which we could measure the flesh and blood effects of Home Run. In human terms, the thing was working beautifully and that, to me, was the hinge on the door we were trying so hard to push open.
I tried the image on Sandra. We were into the third week of July. In a couple of days, their summer term over, the kids would be heading north. After a great deal of thought, I’d decided to request a freelance director for the initial shoot on Skye. That way, with the minimum of fuss, I could have a week off.
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