Captain Cat

by David Shaw

a clue. I'm only a country boy. Still, no harm in cutting a dash, hey? Let's hire out the whole package.

  MAIRE LEE

  Alright, the full monty it is.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  So that was me organised. Marie was as good as her word too. Took me to a rental shop, got me fitted out, looked me over and said I'd pass muster.

  She did exactly the same thing all over again in the hotel room when we getting ready for the show. And what with being nervous and all, I was feeling a bit frisky. While she was doing up her tunic I moved in behind her and ran my hands down the front of it. All that lovely soft flesh underneath those hard metal buttons. Then my hand stopped in surprise when I touched the medal ribbons over her left breast pocket.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  What are these, then?

  MARIE LEE

  The Iraq campaign medal and the Iraq reconstruction medal.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  You're a tough girl.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  She was, and she proved it right then and there by giving me a sharp pinch on the back of one of my roving hands.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Ouch! Did I say something wrong?

  MARIE LEE

  I needed to make a point. No body language or signs of any kind of affection whilst the cameras are on us. It's important to me, Dave, so don't forget.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Oh, right. Your husband will be watching. Come to think of it, why isn't he here with you?

  MARIE LEE

  I'm not married. Not now. We were divorced three years ago. But I still wear the ring at the hospital. It makes dealing with some of the patients easier.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Yeah, OK. But you have a partner, you live with somebody, right?

  MARIE LEE

  No, no permanent arrangement.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  What? Why the hell didn't you tell me that before we started all this perfume nonsense?

  MARIE LEE

  What do you mean nonsense? I thought you said it was a good idea.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Yes, it was a bloody good idea, it still is a bloody good idea. All I'm saying is that . . . well. . . what am I saying? I'm saying that maybe I wouldn't have been so interested in being interested in other women if I'd known there was any chance at all of getting seriously interested in you.

  MARIE LEE

  Dave, I'm ten years older than you, I've got a figure like a sack of potatoes, not to mention a face that could stop a horse race in mid gallop. Don't be silly.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  I know very well what sort of figure you've got. I've handled it enough to know. And ten years difference is no big deal. As for your face, OK, maybe I can't see well enough to hit a dartboard at five paces, but I can see right through you without any eyes and I like what I see. I like it a hell of a lot.

  Or is it just the Army that's the problem? No lovey dovey stuff between a Captain and a Trooper in public. OK, that's cool, I'll be Mr Davenport as soon as my discharge goes through and we can take it from there.

  MARIE LEE

  This has got nothing at all to do with the Army. It's all about the fact that my son will be watching tonight.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Your son!

  MARIE LEE

  I got married, I had a kid. It's something that happens to a lot of women, surprise, surprise. My son's called Shannon and he's eight years old. You're a great guy, Dave, but I don't see you as being the type to settle down as any kind of a step-father, especially with a boy of that age. There's no way we could have any kind of long term relationship.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  But look . . .

  MARIE LEE

  Dave, I'm putting no more emotional strain on my son. It was bad enough when his father left and not much better when I had to leave him with my mother while I was deployed overseas. If it was just me and you I could perhaps afford to make another stupid mistake. But I'm not making one that involves Shannon.

  Come on, it's time to go to the studio.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  So that left me with plenty to think over as we left the hotel and went into the Channel 11 building. Normally I'd have been really uptight about being a talking head on the box, even if it was only for five minutes. Not then though. The whole deal with Marie had suddenly turned itself inside out and pushed everything else to the back of my mind. Until I was actually being interviewed.

  OK, I'll amend that statement. For the first two minutes it was mostly talk between the girl who was interviewing us and Marie explaining about her perfume idea. With me sitting there by her, literally blindsided. I didn't even know if I was looking in the right direction. It was hot as well and sweat was running down my back and soaking into the expensive silk shirt I had on. Worse of all, I knew that as soon as I was asked a question I'd gabble out some kind of incoherent response, making a complete fool of myself and Marie as well.

  Then the girl got me in her sights and started asking about why I'd become interested in poetry. It was a fair question: what got under my skin was the sarcastic edge in her tone. You know what I mean, all those media interviewers sound the same, as though they're showing off yet another village idiot to their audience. It was like she was dealing with some moronic dipstick on a low rent TV reality show. So suddenly I became angry instead of nervous.

  But not angry enough to lose my cool. When she asked me why I was interested in poetry I went for her throat with a smile on my lips.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Well, poetry can be useful if you're really stuck for words. For example, I've just written a letter to the parents of my mate, Jason, the trooper who was killed standing beside me. There were no words inside my head that could do that job. But I found some in a poem which came very close to explaining how I feel. In fact they were written about a hundred years ago by a poet called James Elroy Flecker as part of a poem called 'The Golden Journey to Samarkand'.

  Can I quote a few lines from it to show what I mean?

  INTERVIEWER

  Certainly. Please do.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  'We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

  Always a little further: it may be

  Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow,

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

  White on a throne or guarded in a cave

  There lives a prophet who can understand

  Why men were born: but surely we are brave,

  Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.'

  Jason was brave and he made the golden journey to where brave men

  go. That was what I wanted to say to his family.

  INTERVIEWER

  That's quite -- no, that's very impressive.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Yet that's only part of it. Because I found two more lines in the same poem which also said something for me to somebody I wanted to thank in a very special way.

  INTERVIEWER

  What lines are those, Dave? And who are they for?

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Let me put them into context first. When you wake up in a hospital and find out your eyes aren't working any more you soon realise that you've become trapped inside your own head. You need somebody very special to lead you back into the world. Which is why I'll never forget these lines. They're about Jason, about me, and about somebody who was around when I badly needed help:

  'And one the Bedouin shall slay,

  and one, sand-stricken on the way,

  Go dark and blind; and one shall

  say - "How lonely is the Caravan!'

  INTERVIEWER

  Dave, are you talking about Captain Lee -- about Marie?

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Of course.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  After that, thank God, it was mostly a female gab fest again between the TV girl and Marie. The gi
rl wanted to know more about our relationship and must have decided that Marie was the one of us most likely to talk. Which turned out to be a bad guess because Marie just stonewalled the questions until the next commercial break and we were out of the hot seats.

  The next part was a lot better. It was in what they called the hospitality room, where the TV people offered us a complimentary glass of champagne. To tell the truth, it was lousy champagne but at least it was cool. After what I'd said on air I wouldn't have been surprised if Marie had turned out to be as cold as the ice bucket the bottle was sitting in but instead she was as full of fizzle as the bubbly. Standing close to me, telling me what was happening, and giving my hand a quick squeeze as she filled up my glass.

  I asked her how she thought the interview had gone and she said it had seemed pretty good to her. In fact she said she thought I'd done OK. Personally, I thought I'd have done better to have kept my mouth shut and let sleeping poets lie. But then a couple of TV executive types arrived with another bottle of champagne -- and a lot better vintage than what we'd been drinking.

  To cut to the chase both of them were trying to talk at once about the interview and about a lot phone calls and emails they were getting. Many more than they usually received after an interview. And just about all of them were very positive about the Dave and Marie show. The general reaction was that she was the best thing to happen to Army nursing since Florence Nightingale. And as for Dave Davenport, I was getting a lot of encouraging messages from the great British public to keep hot on the scent with my perfume and the poetry.

  Of course all I could do was to joke about it and tell Marie that I felt like Pam Ayres. The TV guys seemed interested in us anyway and said they'd probably arrange for another interview very soon.

  I wasn't at all keen on that, I didn't think Marie would herself much good with the Army by going down that road again, especially if her CO got even a whiff of a notion that Captain