Shaun Clarke - Heroes of the South Atlantic

Jock didn’t mind doing it for a purpose, but he hated time-filling. He didn’t have a wife and kids – nor did Taff or Andrew – so like them, he wanted to be somewhere else, putting his training to good use.

‘It was because of Lampton,’ Andrew said, gazing around the busy bar, taking in the country-squire types and thinking what sheltered lives they led, insulated from the real world by inherited status and wealth, removed from questions of black and white, the crude realities of blood and bone. ‘If he hadn’t dropped his guard and copped it, we’d all be there still.’

That quietened them all a moment. They didn’t normally discuss the dead – those who had failed to ‘beat the clock.’ Andrew realized that he’d said the wrong thing and felt bad about it. Embarrassed, he gazed around the bar again, reflecting that some of those privileged-looking old codgers had possibly fought in the last war, or in Malaysia or Aden, and might even be connected to the Regiment, which could explain why they lived here. You never knew if someone was in or not, so you shouldn’t pass judgement.

‘Look,’ Taff said, squinting up through clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke at the TV angled over the busy bar. ‘It’s a special broadcast,’ he said. ‘Something about an invasion…’

‘Is that British troops we’re seeing with their hands up?’ Jock interrupted, watching the grainy newsreel images on the box. ‘Where the hell is that?’

‘Something about Argentina,’ Andrew replied. ‘Not quite there, but nearby.’

‘I love her,’ Danny Porter said without the slightest trace of guile, ‘and I want to marry her and protect her always. I’m here to ask your permission.’

Danny was holding Darlene’s hand in the tiny living-room in the small house in Kingswinford, West Midlands, bravely facing her mother and father. Mrs Dankworth was a fading peroxide blonde with a wicked sense of humour and too great a love of men, including Danny. However, her husband, Vince, was further advanced in his state of not entirely natural decay, with unshaven jowls and a beer belly, a face scarred slightly by a broken bottle in a pub fight. He also had a tendency to feel superior to most folk.

Vince Dankworth’s sneer was presently reserved for the way in which Danny shamelessly held Darlene’s hand and kept smiling encouragingly at her, which hardly squared with the little berk’s timid nature. He thought that Danny was a little berk because, although he was in the Army, he rarely talked about it and invariably mumbled evasively when he did. Vince was an ageing rocker and constant fan of Gene Vincent, after whose wife, Darlene, the subject of one of Vincent’s great rock-’n’-roll laments, Vince had emotionally named his own daughter. In fact, Vince had originally been called Victor, which just about says it all.

Yeah, Gene Vincent! Now there was a real rocker. A gaunt, acned face, black leather pants and jacket, his leg in a brace which he pounded against the floor as he sneered and leered at the audience, before hitting the road again and smashing up some more motel rooms. The first really rebellious rocker, a bona fide original – not like that preening pretender Elvis Presley with his big, dark, girlish eyelashes and smarmy love songs.

Yes, Vince admired wild men – the ‘bona fides’, as he called them – and so could hardly accept that young Danny, who seemed so shy, even slightly effeminate, could actually be in the Army, let alone in the so-called Special Air Service.

Special for what?

Danny was 22, though he looked about 18. For this very reason, when Vince asked him what he had done in the Army in Northern Ireland and Danny merely shrugged shyly, mumbling something about ‘not much’, Vince completely believed him.

He would never have believed, on the other hand, that the shy young man sitting modestly in front of him had the instincts of a born killer and was renowned in the SAS for the number of times he had fearlessly practised the ‘double tap’ against known terrorists in Belfast. This involved entering incognito some of the most dangerous areas of the city to discharge thirteen rounds from his Browning high-power handgun in under three seconds, at close range, into his victim’s body, then making his escape in a car parked nearby before witnesses had time to gather their wits.

Danny’s ruthlessness was breathtaking, even to more seasoned members of the Regiment, but since such assassinations could not be sanctioned by the authorities, let alone recognized, he never received commendations and certainly never discussed his work with the Regiment. He would only say he was in the ‘Army’, mumbling uncomfortably when he did so, thus encouraging the former Ted and fan of greasy Gene Vincent to suspect that his daughter’s baby-faced boyfriend was some kind of poofter.

Now the baby-faced, whispering poofter was asking Vince for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Well, what could you say?

‘Right,’ Vince said magnanimously. ‘I guess that’s it, then. You want to marry Darlene – OK then, I won’t stand in yer way. Me and Darlene’s mum, we married young as well, so I guess we can’t say no.’

He smirked at Darlene’s bottle-blonde mum as she pursed her lips in a sensual ‘O’, blowing a couple of smoke rings, her bosom rising and falling impressively under a tight, low-cut blouse.

‘Dead right,’ she replied.

‘Thank you, Mr and Mrs Dankworth,’ Danny said. ‘I won’t let Darlene down. God, I’m so pleased. Thank you.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ good old Vince said impatiently. ‘Hey, love, you’ll soon have a son-in-law. That should turn you grey!’

It wasn’t the kind of house where you uncorked champagne, so Danny took Darlene out for a beer and a game of pool in the local pool hall, a right den of iniquity, to which he had been introduced by Vince.

‘Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason,’ Vince had said. ‘That movie, The Hustler . A fucking masterpiece, kid. A work of art. A real man’s game, is pool.’

Danny, though not yet a man in Vince’s eyes, had learnt the game quickly, but was careful never to beat his girlfriend’s dad. With his dreamy baby face hiding the instincts of a killer, Danny knew exactly what he wanted – and what he wanted was Darlene.

‘You probably think I’m pretty coarse playing pool,’ Darlene said as they walked along slummy streets to the pool hall. ‘But a lot of me workmates play it as well. It’s the real gear around here.’

Darlene was a switchboard operator for British Telecom, and her workmates, as Danny had noticed, could be a bit on the free side. Danny, who had his innocent side, thought this was real neat.

‘It’s a good game,’ he told Darlene reassuringly. ‘It sharpens the reflexes.’

‘Oh, you don’t need those sharpened,’ Darlene said with a surprisingly coarse chuckle. ‘Your reflexes are wonderful! ’

Danny blushed brightly with embarrassment and pride, which made Darlene love him all the more.

‘God,’ she said, ‘you’re so sweet .’

Which made him blush all the more.

Once in the pool hall, they ordered a pint of beer each and while waiting for a vacant table discussed when they should marry. As Danny was between ops with his Regiment, and therefore based in the camp in Hereford rather than in Belfast, they agreed that they should do it as soon as possible.

‘I can’t wait any longer,’ Darlene said. ‘Oh, I do love you, Danny.’

When Danny studied Darlene’s sweet, moon-shaped face, bright-green eyes and jet-black hair, a lump always came to his throat. Now, with Willy Nelson singing ‘Always On My Mind’ coming from the radio perched high on one wall, that lump returned to his throat and filled him up with emotion.