Down in the dumps is no place to be for a love sick Romeo, fretting about his stolen Juliet.
‘’ She’ll come back, I know it,’’ but for this hopeless romantic, the dingy, damp, beer stained, putrid smelling hole of a bar had become all too familiar a stomping ground. Thoughts like this ran through my head watching the idiotic adolescence complain about how he was to good for her, she wasn’t worth it, but I could see his hidden anguishing mention of her name that there were emotional floodgates being restrained.
As the night wore on, his pain turned to anger. He must have noticed my intrigue at his rants and demanded that I
‘’Piss off’’ as I think back on it now I don’t think smirking was a good idea. I couldn’t help but be cocky in response to this little punk’s threat. He strutted over like some pride stricken peacock slapped my drink out of my hand and pushed my chest.
‘’ Come on then big man’’ he screamed throwing a sloppy punch. My S.A.S training was probably an unfair advantage in a fight with a nineteen year old drunk. He didn’t know what hit him as my knee drive into his chest, his cries of pain were met with a swift elbow in his nose followed by a kick that snapped his knee like a twig. It was over in about thirty seconds and as I looked at the bloody heap of a love sick Romeo on the floor flashbacks of the night ran through my mind again. Maybe it was the drink or the adrenaline but I could swear I could feel my heart beat in my throat.
That night started afresh but as usual, it ended the same way, but it ended like all the others, a drunken fumble of keys into a rusty lock, I’ll oil it tomorrow. Every time it depresses me to walk into that crap hole that I call home, an adjacent grab towards a bottle of Russian vodka and a self loathing drop into a bed that’s a few sleeps from the scrap heap. Just like every nightly routine had a repeating track in my head so had the dreams. Every time the same, I would walk up to the mutilated corpse of my wife fruitlessly shielding the dead body of my three year old daughter, each time I was seconds too late, each time so close to an unreachable goal.
That faithful night happened on the twenty second of December, at about twenty past five. We were in London shopping and I remember my daughters big brown eyes looking up at me as we carried her through the streets heading back to Victoria Station to catch the last train back to Hereford. She smiled at me and pointed at the Santa’s Grotto. I looked at the line, it was long, too long. If we had waited I knew we wouldn’t be back in time for the train. I looked my daughter in the eyes and said softly
‘’Sorry pet, we don’t have time, maybe next year aye ?’’ I often thought that she was way too mature for her age, she just looked up, sniffed her nose and nodded. I could see the sadness in her eyes, holding back the welling tears. I looked around me quickly and seen a huge teddy bear in a shop window. I told my wife to go on back to the train, I’d catch up. I didn’t give her confusion a chance to manifest as I darted off towards the shop. I was twenty three at the time and three years on I can still remember the joy inside when I thought of the smile on my daughters face when I would give her the bear. I never got to though. There was a terrorist attack in the train station as I jogged down the stairs to the Hereford platform. The blast knocked me off my feet and as I tumbled down the stairs, I seen it happening. Three men in balaclavas burst from a maintenance room firing shots from cheap copies of AK-47s, I seen the bullets ripping into my family, as I scrambled to my feet and pulled out my standard issue Glock pistol and took them out. I fell to my knees at the bodies of my still breathing family and at that, they breathed their last breath.
I wake up every morning screaming, if only we had gone to bloody see Santa, if only. Every morning I hear my wife’s voice telling to move on, the only problem is, I don’t know if I can. People say you don’t look for love, it finds you, and sometimes in the unlikeliest places of all. That morning started like this, my morning vodka followed in quick succession by a Polish cigarette, not because they were cheaper, they were stronger and the only thing that slowed my blood enough to keep me calm. That day was different though, I could hear constant screams in my head walking about the kitchen in search of a bowl that was bearably clean enough to eat knock off cereal that that was probably weeks out of date. That’s when I saw it, the brown letter I received a few days ago and as usual had neglected reading it. I hadn’t noticed before but it had the regiment symbol on it. Upon opening the envelope a sheet slid out and landed on my mess ridden kitchen counter. It was a letter asking me to give a talk at a local university about what life in the regiment was like and what the requirements are to get in, I guess it was their way of showing some compassion for a loser like me.
I really should have opened the letter a little sooner as the talk had to be given tomorrow and, well the state I was in twenty four hours could be a bit too short of a time to fix the situation. The letter said that the regiment would send around a car to pick me up for the talk.
The talk was to be given at the local Hereford Tech. I walked into the lecture room in my old uniform, the first time I had been wearing respectable dress and clean shaved in about a year and a half. About halfway through the talk I looked up towards the back row and I saw her. I’d say she must have been about twenty two or twenty three, with soft slightly tanned skin. She had deep brown hair with warm inviting chestnut eyes that stared off in a melancholy gaze directed out the window, I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed her beforehand, she looked alone in a room full of young men all buzz cut and hell bent on joining the military. My natural curiosity got the better of me and I decided I would stop to talk to her at the end of the lecture.
She stopped smiling as I acknowledged her. She looked up and it was then I began to reminisce nostalgically of the distant past of female company. She said
‘’ I’m not what you would expect at a talk about joining the army are you’’ she spoke in a confident manner, ‘’just curious’’ I returned. The conversation ended with me asking her for a drink that night, I felt like a schoolboy again with her nodding agreement. The payment I received for doing the talk was quickly put to use on buying some clothes that didn’t consist of beer and tobacco stained t-shirts and tracksuits. It felt weird, it must have been the first time I’d worn jeans in about a year and for the second time in a day I’d looked semi-decent.
I walked in the bar door feeling like I was cheating in a way that felt right, it was a hard feeling to explain. There she was, leaning on the bar with a beer in he hand, she was wearing tight black jeans with a red Ramones t-shirt on, her hair was drifting down over her eyes and ran down to her shoulders, she had a noticeable but yet subtle red lipstick on. I walked up to her, trying to hide the smile tearing from ear to ear, and the internal drum beat that was ricocheting of my rib cage. We sat down at a table in the far corner of the room. As the night wore on I could feel myself falling more and more for this girl, a girl I had just met that day in a lecture that I was offered out of remorse for my situation. It had just past ten o’clock and we were leaving the bar, for once I was still sober and was blissfully holding the tender hand of a girl I had fallen head over heels for in the space of about two hours. I walked he to her apartment and as she turned and kissed me softly on the lifts I could feel a warm sensation of a blood rush streaming through my veins, and nervous excitement choking in my throat.
I walked back to my apartment with an unusual happy spring to my step, there was no more drunken fumbling of keys. The vodka went in the bin and I had my first peaceful nights sleep in a long time.
Three months down the line and I couldn’t be happier, Rebecca, the girl from the lecture had moved into my apartment and it happily embraced a woman’s touch, much needed of course. Rebecca has now joined the peace core and I started working for the regiment again and I’m about to start my first mission in a few days. They say that you find love in the strangest of places. There’s just one more thing, I still haven’t oiled that bloody door.