Seven Veils of Wisdom – Bloc One – by P J Searle
Chapter Four

In the elliptic War Room, Washington DC, an emergency meeting was in progress. President Douglas Caxton, a young man with matinee-idol looks, leant his chin on his hand as he sat waiting in pregnant silence, surrounded by a semi-circle of senators; all eyes studied the Megatron monitor screen. It suddenly came to life as Falstaff’s face peered out at them.

Caxton expelled a long-held breath as he spoke into his microphone. ‘Dear God! what kept you? ... Report!’

After a short time-delay, Falstaff’s voice crackled, out of sinc, ‘I got bad news, Mr. President, then some real bad news… I’m sorry.’

‘Report, Captain.’

‘We have to keep this short, Sir,’ came Falstaff’s reply after another time-laps, ’I don’t know how long we have contact for… it’s intermittent. You asked for an onboard computer assessment. Well, the bad news is you don’t need a computer assessment to know the Mare – sorry, the Pegasus, is out of commission... I asked it anyway. The ‘real bad news’ is… it refused!’

‘It what?’ said Caxton, somewhat baffled, ‘What do you mean, refused?’

’Just that, Mister President. It said, no dice! It understood and processed. Its message simply read, ‘Assessment denied.’

‘Was that all?’

‘No, Sir, that was not all. Just one other word… Marjoram.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes, Sir... not another single, solitary syllable.’

‘Jesus, holy Christ help us,’ gasped Caxton, putting his hands to his head in anguish. ‘Okay, Captain, our men are almost with you. Let’s hope we can work this through. Good luck. – Out.’ Falstaff’s face dissolved away to a blank screen. Caxton looked around the room. Ashen faces stared back at him, waiting for his comment. He was about to speak but instead shook his head despondently and leaned back on his hands.

Three Mirage jets dutifully shepherded the rogue French missile as it flew its spurious course. Suddenly the nose-cone covers blasted free, scattering blanket-bombs over a huge area. Bombs rained down towards the Earth and simultaneously exploded five hundred feet from the sea. The nuclear shower covered a hundred square miles with a radioactive shroud. Only a single jet survived the initial blast. Through its canopy the mesmerized pilot observed the inferno swelling towards him with horrific force. He pulled the aircraft into a climb in forlorn hope to outrun it, then whispered in hushed prayer, ‘Holy mother of God… into your hands I–’

The aircraft was consumed.

In the Pegasus control-room, the three men huddled around a bank of computers. Rees and Walden sat in front of the monitors, with Falstaff standing looking on.

‘Marjoram?’ said Falstaff, to the back of Walden’s head. ‘What have you got?’

Walden momentarily looked away from the screen. ‘Just a plant or herb, Captain… could be someone’s name, I suppose… probably a codename. How come the computer will let us in for this, but nothing else?’

‘How the hell do I know?’ growled Falstaff. ‘What you got, Rees, you’re the sparks?’

‘I don’t got not’un, Massa.’

‘Will you damnwell cut that shit out!’ yelled Falstaff, hurling his words into Rees’ face. ‘What the hell is wrong with you, man?’ Rees gave a covert ‘got you’ grin. ‘If you got some problem, Sailor,’ continued Falstaff, ‘there’s a pressure suit – get yourself topside and out of my face before we hit bottom.’

‘Sorry, Sir,’ said Rees, his smile fading to deadpan. ‘It’s a name of a plant… an operation codename… maybe.’

‘So, why that name? Speculate man… speculate!’

’Don’t know, Sir. No good reason, I guess. Why operation ‘Market Garden’ why operation ‘Overlord? Who knows, did they need a reason… Sir?’

’Why ‘Desert Storm’ – Why ‘Operation Crossbow’ for the operation against the V1 flying bomb? Yeah, there’s always a reason, however remote. Work on it. And stop calling me, ‘Sir’… you make it sound like a goddam insult.’

‘Sure, Boss. Anything you say, Boss.’

The two men eyeballed each other. Rees broke off first. Falstaff looked to Warden. ‘Right, now take her down to the bottom… slow, we don’t want to upset the Mare.’

‘Yes, Captain.’ Walden moved away and started to flood the tanks.

Falstaff turned back to Rees. ‘Are you wearing a regulation neck chip, or one of those newfangled, prosthetic implants?’

Rees reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small, black medallion-sized communicator dog-tag.

‘Just the regulation neck-chip, Boss – I don’t have nothin’ put inside me that the good Lord never intended; I ain’t no Frankenstein’s monster, nor am I no modern Pro,metheus neither. I didn’t steal Jack-diddly from no gods.’

Falstaff rolled his eyes in tedium. ‘How about you, Walden, chip or implant?’

‘I have the twenty-twenty QuickVision implanted just behind my right ear, Sir. An’ I have a secondary memory i-lobe with the entire compilation of every episode of Dukes of Hazard, and every Country record ever recorded, implanted behind my left ear. It uses the redundant parts of the cerebellum and temporal lobe for storage, depending on what kinda stuff you want to store – some people even sacrifice their ability to read an write, just so as to git more space. I mean what sane person reads an’ writes these day?’ S~ᴇaʀᴄh the ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

‘I do,’ said Rees.

‘I think that illustrates my point.’ Walden paused a moment for effect. ‘I also got the top ten Oscar-winning classic, 20th-century movies… that’s when they made real movies, not the FX, CGI shit you git nowadays. I can watch my favourite film or TV show whenever I like, via skype-link: video games, and boring old hyp-web, an’ a shit-load of porn channels, even though no one hardly uses them no more. Every Tom Dick an’ Fanny hustling to get their moment of infamy… there was a time when they paid porn stars, now they have to pay to get viewed, them an’ sat-cruise, or I just hum a tune an’ I got Dolly Parton right here inside my head.’

Falstaff rolled his eyes again and sighed, ‘You poor, poor man – I’m sorry I asked.’

‘In about a year,’ continued Walden, totally unabashed, ‘it will replace the communicator/dog-tag necklace as regulation issue. It has VVD2R optimum, voice and vision-direct-to-retina, picks up vision and neuro-relays direct via a procured retina connection. And you can record or make a photo-render to your memory lobe, right through your own eyes – what you see is what you git.’

‘Did it hurt?’ said Falstaff, slightly bewildered, ‘You know, having it fitted inside your head – the procured connection?’

‘No Sir. It’s as easy as having your ears, nose or tongue pierced, an’ you can take it out just easy as an earring or nose-ring... so they say… though I haven’t tried taking it out yet… not since I had it fitted; no need, it’s totally benign.’

‘And you can see… inside your head? – How, for God’s sake?’

‘Well Sir, they procure stem cells from bone-marrow and navigate a nerve ending using neurogenetics, the Joseph Altman technique, like he did with rats, “from brain to retina, which takes just one day in our clinic.” – I’m quoting from the brochure.’

‘No kidding.’

‘No kidding, Sir.’ Falstaff looked away, seemingly bored with the irrelevant conversation. Walden shrugged and looked blankly into his monitor screen. He let his mind wander back two months, to when he’d had the QuickVision and i-lobe fitted, the day in the clinic. It was nothing spectacular, nothing that even slightly vexed him, yet it would be the most devastating occurrence of his life. The clinic was as the brochure had stated in the text, and in the pictures printed in full 4Dcolor. No surprises. He’d paid for the best and he was getting the best. There were cheaper packages, lesser deals, but as his father had always driven home to all his fifteen children – he could hear the old man say it like it was yesterday – “you gits outta this life, kids, what you pays for in this life.”

How he wished he’d ignored that sound advice and taken the lesser SlickVision deal, which was a virtual copy of the same product, as the name implied. With this product, it was only a morning in a salon, and no costly in-depth medical examination and no cost for blood and DNA & RNA testing. If he had taken that he’d never have known, and he would not have this Sword of Damocles hanging over his head. The medics had found him to be suffering from leukomia, a new, gamma-ray induced form of leukaemia. Whether the disease was contracted from a lifetime spent in nuclear subs or not it was of no consequence to him; he’d lived the life he wanted. He had been advised to give up his post and retire from the service. They may just as well have said, "go blow your brains out". Walden was navy and he’d stay navy until they kicked him out or he died on the job. Other than that he just didn’t know. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell the family.

Rees looked up from his monitor. ‘You’s a fuckin’ zombie, Walden. I’ll stick with the regulation neck chip.’

Rees’ remark filed away the troublesome quandary to the back of Walden’s mind. ‘In one year, Rees,’ he said as he puffed out his chest with pride, ‘it will be regulation. Zombie or otherwise, I’m what you might call a pioneer. We submariners are a special breed of men, we have that pioneer spirit; we have a different God to surface-mariners and landlubbers, and what makes us want to spend our lives below the waves out of reach of the outside world, he alone knows.’

‘Maybe we just can’t take the outside world,’ said Rees, ‘Down here, nothin’ can touch us. All the sins and worries of the wicked world stop at forty fathoms.’

‘Unless you got the twen’y-twen’y QuickVision sewed into your head.’

‘Which, thank our Mariner’s God, I don’t,’ chipped Rees.

‘In a year, Rees, you will. And by that time it will… and I quote, “… relay direct thought.” – You’ll be able to dial and think a message without opening your goddamn yap... so they say.’

‘O, how I look forward to that,’ interrupted Falstaff, with contempt. ‘How’s she faring, Walden?’

‘Thirty fathoms, Sir. Steady as a rock.’

– In the depths, the submarine slowly sank into the black icy water. –

Rees smiled and turned from his screen back to Walden. ‘Hey, Walden. I heard about this businessman’s data-bank computer. It fits inside your body, takes the place of your spleen, runs direct off the body’s electricity– ’

‘Do we need to know this, Rees?’ interrupted Falstaff again, ‘We have work to do.’

‘Yeah, Boss, it’s relevant. See, you can download your memos an’ stuff just by plugging your Johnson straight into your secretary’s kazoo. Now, here’s where us black guys get the edge… jack-plug supremacy.’

‘Did you know, Rees,’ said Walden, laughing, ‘a lot of guys are secretaries nowadays?’ He fluttered his eyelids provocatively.

Rees gave him a searching look. ‘What the hell are you on, Walden, you old goat? That gismo in your head has addled your goddam brain.’

Walden shrugged and closed his eyes.

Falstaff lightened and grudged a smile, ‘You think we got time to listen to this baloney, Rees?’

‘We ain’t going nowheres, Captain,’ said Rees, ‘not on this tide.’

‘Rees, let me make one thing clear, I’m getting out of here, even if you two ain’t. They’re retiring me in six months – got a nice desk job lined up. Well, they can shove it where the sun don’t shine!’

’You tell ‘em, Boss.’

‘You want to know where, Rees?’ Falstaff said it with a hint of longing in his voice, ‘Where I’m going to retire?’

‘The Keys, right, Captain?’

‘Yeah, all you navy brass retire to the Keys.’ said Walden, grudgingly opening one eye.

’I am not "brass", Walden. And I’m not going to the "Keys", Rees – Wales! I bought a little place in the hills. My wife’s folks come from there. She’s there now, waiting for me.’ He stopped talking and closed his eyes. He was there, Glamorganshire, Wales, Greater Britain. In his mind’s eye he saw his wife, Claire, busily pottering in the garden of a picturesque cottage, her natural beauty giving her a look far younger than her forty years. In the distance was the Bristol Channel, shimmering in the weak silvery sunlight. A shadow fell across her face. She turned and shielded her eyes; he was standing over her.

‘How they doing?’

She smiled up at him. ‘The beans? They’ll do.’

‘They always do. You have the touch.’

She smiled again. ‘Oh, I wish I did, Stew.’ Overbearing gloom now covered her smile.

Falstaff took hold of her hand. ‘Hey, what did we say – upwards and forwards, no looking downways or back,’ he forced a serious face, ‘And that’s an order, Sailor.’

She looked away momentarily then turned back, forcing herself to smile again. ‘Do men really take orders from you?’

Falstaff, relieved for the distraction, offered a stern face. ‘You bet your sweet ass– bottom, they do.’ He smiled and shook his head in wonderment.

‘What?’ said Claire, ‘What!?’

‘Bottom,’ he laughed. ‘And what’s the other one? ... Knickers! God, that’s what I miss most when I’m at sea, your Limey language. It’s so human, so... earthy.’

‘Hey, I’m no bloody Limey.’ She exaggerated her slight Welsh accent. ‘I’m Welsh! Proud of it, see.’ He bent down to her and put an arm around her waist, then moved the other hand up under the hem of her dress. She theatrically glared at him. ‘And just what do you think you’re doing, Boyo? – I’m busy, go find a sheep like all the other Welshmen do.’

He grabbed her up in his arms and held her for a moment. Then he was staring past her, over her shoulder, out across the Severn Estuary to the sea.

‘Would that be Wales, England?’ said Rees, dragging Falstaff angrily back to reality.

‘Wales is not in England, you retard! It’s a country all on its own, goddamit!’ He calmed slightly, reminisced a moment more, then continued. ‘And boy, what a country – that last remark, Sailor, is verging on mutiny. Consider yourself confined to ship.’

‘Well, Captain, I ain’t gonna live in no hovel in, where was it … W a l e s?’ He said the word slowly.

Falstaff smiled. ‘Rees, it’s the greatest place on this old planet... the best of the British Isles, that’s for sure. You could say it’s their soul.’

‘Hallelujah!’ said Rees, then turned disinterestedly back to his monitor.

Falstaff rolled his eyes and looked to Walden. The old sailor still had his eyes closed: – in stark black and white, Harry gave a condescending half-smile as he stood on the parapet of the big-wheel Chairoplane, the main attraction of the bleak fairground. ‘Look down there...’ he said as he entered. Holly Martins’ eyes followed Harry’s pointing finger, to the people milling around the open space far below. Harry continued. ‘Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?’ Martins studied the ant-like people. ‘If I offered you 20,000 US dollars for every dot that stopped – would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man...’ Holly Martins considered. Harry smiled and continued. ‘Free of income tax. It’s the only way to save money nowadays.’

Martins shook his head. ‘Lot of good your money will do you in jail.’

‘That jail is in another zone...’ said Harry Lime, smugly.

‘How deep are we?’

‘…There’s no proof against me, beside you, Holly, old man.’

‘Walden! WALDON, HOW DEEP ARE WE?’ Falstaff’s words bit into the movie and the fairground Chairoplane, Harry Lime, and the vibrating zither of Anton Karas’ Der Dritte Mann faded away as Walden opened his eyes to the submarine’s monitor screen.

‘Sorry Sir… She’s going easy. Thirty-four fathoms.’

‘God’s sake stay aware, these last fathoms need to be dead slow. We dare not rattle the Mare.’ Falstaff shook his head in bewilderment and turned back to Rees.

‘Where’d you come from, Rees; where’s home?’

‘Africa!’ He said it bluntly. Falstaff gave a wearisome look. Rees smiled and continued. ‘Long Island. That’s where the British lost America, and America lost its honour.’

‘What will you do when you leave the navy, Rees – you’re divorced, right?’

‘No, Sir. Not divorced, I’m estranged.’

‘You can say that again. You’re the most estranged man I ever knew.’

’I like that word, ‘estranged’ … My wife got disillusioned; she thought I was officer material, she’d been woefully misinformed.’

‘You’re a good sailor, Rees … you’re intelligent, you could make officer grade. After this, I’ll recommend you.’

‘No way, Boss. Save your charity. When my contract comes up for renewal I’m out of here… that is if we do get out of this. See, I’ll be a navy hero. There’ll be a medal in this, an’ they just love navy heroes with medals in The Keys… yes, Sir.’

‘Don’t blow it, Sailor. The navy needs good men with your experience. It’s the only job… it’s noble.’

‘With all due respect, Boss, that is a crock… Nobility is dead; no one needs nothin’ no more. In the future they’ll just stick a goddamn chip in some jerk’s neck an’ you’ll have a sparks, or a skipper come to that. You’ll be able to download a PhD, right inside your head. Why bother?’

‘There I must agree with you, Rees. But you’ve still got some good navy years left in the service.’

‘Good navy years are for you, brass … “The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast”.’

Falstaff gave an indulgent frown. 'As I said, Rees, I’m not brass. What would I do… dress up like a puppet and be part of the parade… join the charade? No, no-one’s going to ‘cast’ me as brass… just a redundant skipper.’

‘The whole human race is redundant. No room for bad-assed Niggers or heroic Captains no more. All the wrongs have been righted.’

’Oh yeah? One word, Rees: ‘marjoram’. I think you have been woefully misinformed.’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ Rees looked away, back to his screen somewhat defeated.

Falstaff shook his head and turned to Walden. Touching his own ear he indicated to Walden’s QuickVision ear implant. ‘Will that thing reach the surface from down here?’

‘Yes, Sir. It’ll pick off the ship’s top-side antenna, that’s if the Mare will let it.’

‘Okay, try it.’

Walden pinched his eyes closed with his fingers. After a moment he opened them again. ‘Who do I call, Sir?’

‘I don’t give a damn,’ growled Falstaff, exasperated. ‘The goddam Pope if you like. I just want to know if it’s working! – Jeeesus!’

Walden shrugged and closed his eyes again.

Rees looked on, laughing. After a moment the smile faded and his thoughts were now of his own wife, Sarah, back home in Long Island. He saw her troubled face: a pretty black woman, the blackest woman, person, he’d ever known. She was thirty-five but looked more like twenty-five. She stood speaking into her neck chip held out in her hand.

‘Honey! You was going to call me before you left? How could you just leave without saying goodbye, you didn’t need to do that, Rees.’

In her neck chip screen, Rees saw his own face appear. The face shrugged, ‘Baby... I was going to call you... Just couldn’t think of nothin’ to say.’

‘You could say, I’ll be thinking of you, or I’ll miss you, or I’ll dream of you sometimes, something like that. You could’ve said that.’ She swiped a finger across the screen and Rees’ face enlarged, showing a close-up of his capitulating eyes.

‘Or, I still love you,’ his face answered, ‘I could say that.’

‘No! Don’t say that,’ she said it desperately, ‘Not that. You can’t have it both ways, Rees. It’s time to let go or move on… for both of us. If you really loved me you’d let it go, and you’d come home and say it properly; you can’t do it over a goddamn neck chip! Let it go, Rees, we both love you. Your daughter wants you to come home… little Shelley wants her daddy. God’s sake, let it go!’

‘I’d let it go, but it won’t let me go. “One unguarded thought has the power to pollute a dream” … Mary Shelley, again… I think–’

‘Pollute!’ interrupted Sarah, deeply offended. The chip went dead.

Rees closed his eyes and let his mind wander. It was the same old story … he was back there, the graduation party, dancing with Sarah. He was dressed in Navy whites, and she in a flared dress and bobby socks. She was beautiful. Not yet sixteen years old she was as alluring in her high school dress as any movie starlet or pin-up he knew of. And she was his girlfriend. In his mind’s eye, it was spring, 2015. A doorbell rings; his apartment. He stops dancing and opens the door. It pushes back and two uniformed, navy policemen bundle in. The first officer barges past Rees, gun in hand. He fires point-blank into Sarah’s chest. She screams and throws her arms into the air. ‘Milton!’ yells Rees, ‘You goddamn jerk.’ The other guests retaliate with a salvo of party poppers. The second officer enters, also toting a shiny pistol. He fires back into the crowd. Two dull cracks and exuding streamers that say ‘toy gun’. Sarah, her tee-shirt sodden red with splashed wine, staggers through a cavalcade of descending party-streamers. She rips off the wine-soaked top and cavorts a couple of turns of the room in her bra, then disappears into another room to change. The officers twirl their pistols back into their pristine white holsters and join the revellers.

Rees smiled to himself and looked to Walden, still jabbering on. He knew he couldn’t leave it there; he was compelled to continue. He pinched his eyes closed, hard to the point of pain.

The graduation party nears its drunken climax. Coupling guests fill every couch and corner – the music is ended – darkness – no movement. Suddenly the whole room is drenched in cruel, hard light. Rees had opened the curtains and the brightness that threw into the room physically knocked him back. It was early morning. He remembered crying out in agony, ‘Sarah... Sarah! Where are you for Christ’s sake?’

From a bundle of bodies and discarded clothes, Sarah resurrected, a female Lazarus back from the dead, blinking into the dimness gathering her wits. She was shivering, wearing just her underwear. She found her sweater and pulled it on. Standing unsure she took up her stretch-denim pants, sat on the floor and extruded into the skin-tight garment.

He spoke to her as he watched her dress. ‘Sarah, I need some aspirin or something. Did the boys stay?’

She looked down at the heaped confusion. The two navy police officers were laying face-down, twisted with other bodies, mostly female, among pillows and discarded clothing. She looked back at him. Rees was holding his aching head. ‘Okay baby,’ she said maternally, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Your buddies are there, one dead an’ the other smells like he’s decomposing.’

He saw her walking to him carrying a fizzing drink. He attempts to take it but she holds it back, implying he has something to do to earn it. ‘Don’ jerk around. What, what!?’ – He remembers, ‘Oh, yeah. Happy graduation day.’

Still, she held the drink away from him. ‘And we’s officially engaged today, yeah?’ she said, cocking an eyebrow, ‘We tell everybody, yes? My mum an’ dad, yes?’

‘Oh yeah… that today, too?’

‘Yes. And your folks, yes? – YES?’

‘Yeah, yeah! Gimme the goddam Alka-Seltzer, will ya? Come here.’ He grabbed her up and started to kiss her. Then he gagged, snatched the drink and quickly ran to the bathroom.

He’d replayed the scene a thousand times in his mind’s eye. Sarah was now with about a dozen other girl students, all dressed in azure and gold-tasselled mortarboards and gowns, collecting their graduation scrolls. He saw himself in pristine navy uniform – Sarah launching herself into his arms. A shower of tiny particles tumble slowly in the sunny sky; it is confetti falling into their wedding scene. Sarah is dressed in white, her first flush of pregnancy hardly showing through her wedding gown.

Sarah screams! Rees is holding her hand. He remembered her nails actually drawing blood, he later remarking, ‘Honey, that birth hurt me more than it hurt you.’ His vision was now of Sarah with their toddler daughter, playing on the beach of a coastal resort. He was standing on the cliffs above, watching. Now he had the child. They are on the cliff’s edge. Now the child is alone, out of his reach. Rees beckons; the toddler runs. He stoops to grab her up. He stumbles. Suddenly the child is perilously near the edge. Sarah tries to catch hold, but misses. Rees’ hands frame the picture in his mind’s eye as the child pitches over. Now he was looking over the edge, down to a sunless beach below. Halfway down, on an outcrop ledge, the child lays unmoving, blooded around the head. So much blood, pouring from a wound from her temple. In the distance, there is an ambulance siren. The siren is soft at first, now loud, louder! The siren is layered with the high-pitched trill of the submarine’s depth-gage– Rees shrugged and opened his eyes. He looked over to Walden. The vision was momentarily gone.

Walden’s eyes were still closed as he spoke softly into his open hand, ‘I repeat, Directory one, satellite five, one, seven–’ He opened his eyes and looked to Falstaff. ‘Nope! It just displays the one self-same word, Marjoram. The good news is I can still access my i-lobe. I can still watch my movies and hear my Dolly Parton recordings.’ Falstaff shook his head indulgently and turned away. Walden smiled.

Rees was still imbued in reminiscence, he couldn’t shake it; he knew it would have to have all of it before he could put it out of his mind. Now it was the hospital ward. He watched Sarah through a glass-partitioned room, standing over their heavily bandaged child. Sarah was crying. The doctor came from the room and made his way toward him. He saw it sideways; he was lying on a cot giving blood. The doctor gave a despairing look.

Now he saw himself agonising with Sarah. ‘I tried, Baby,’ he heard himself saying it with desperation and compassion, ‘I tried. It was worse when things were going well. Right in the middle of everything it would hit me, grab at me like a pair of pliers ripping into my bare flesh, a word, a look.’ Sarah had tried to answer but he continued over her. ‘No, just listen. After she got over the accident I’d catch her in a certain angle and I’d see him, Milton; I never noticed before. I’d see him in her face, right out of the blue, when things were going well. That was the worst. You did know it wasn’t me that night… the graduation party?’

She looked to him, tears in her eyes. ‘No, I thought it was you… I’d passed out. I… well, I kinda guessed in the morning, I think… the way I woke up. I tried to lie to myself but I think I knew. Where were you that night? It’s so unfair – all those times we made love and just that once. I never once dreamed, not until the doctor said about the blood group.’ Her eyes now flooded tears, ‘It’s not fair, Rees, it’s just not fair. If we’d had another child, maybe… maybe we could try again? Could we, you know, date, stay a night… anything; I’ll do anything to make it right. I love you, Rees, I’ve never loved anyone, never wanted anyone else but you, and I never will. Come home.’

Rees opened his eyes and let out the breath he’d been inadvertently holding. ‘That’ll do,’ he thought to himself, ‘All the bugs in the mud hatched out… for now, till the next time.’ He looked at Walden and grudged a smile. He could almost hear Dolly Parton singing as the old sailor mouthed the words of Stand by your man.’

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