Stray Dogs

Circa.1979. Shaykh Uhthman, Aden, Peoples Democratic Republic of South Yemen

The camp was a collection of porta cabins set up on the sand by a couple of of four story living blocks just out the suburb Shaykh Uthman one hour drive on the new tarmac to Aden airport. There were cabins for the CA team to sleep in and a Mess hall to eat and drink. They were there to supervise the construction of a road using a contractual system called force account. Jack Winton was the boss, civil engineer cynical corrupt, my first experience of that from an Englishman and a Crown Agents employee. His number two Brian, Welsh, very hail fellow who did the firing. The Lads, those who supervised the shuttering on the culverts, maintained the tippers, ran the graders were the usual crew of mishaps you saw then, in those places: jocks, taffs, Charlie from India, Bob Blackstone from New Zealand, who it was that taught me that a good grader operator can do a level to an accuracy of two millimetres. He told me other stuff too, about holidays in Thailand.

There was a high turnover so there were always leavings and new comings for the weekly flight. I would, once the bar shut, the lads drunk to bed, take the Land Rover down to the airport to meet the plane from London which landed at one in the morning. On the way the packs of stray dogs ran to the head lights, I slowed to dodge them.

I waited in the arrivals, my beginning of a life time of waiting at airports for nervous men to embark blinking and sweating in the winter clothes they had worn in England. No one who was not desperate took contracts in the PDRY in 1979. He stepped out, our new roads man, the only white man who had not gone through the diplomatic channels. His look around, "Has any one come to meet me?

“Hi, Harrison, Crown Agents, welcome to the PDRY. I am sure you are going to hate the place”

His bag loaded, the night air a piece cooler at three in the morning, more for me who had learnt not to wipe the sweat. On the new tarmac beyond Al Mansura where I had been told to keep a steady speed and not ever stop, the dog packs came again from the desert sand between the apartment blocks. This time I did not slow, saw them go below the lights and clunk beneath wheels. There were two packs seconds apart equally suicidal. The Land Rover rolled them well and at sixty clicks kept steady.

We arrived at the Mess, stepped in, “Want a beer” “Have you got a coke” “As you please, have you got the mail?” The new arrivals brought the mail. I would leave each man his letter by the place they sat at breakfast. There would be some without, others receiving their Dear John. My own came a month or two in: “Dear Mike, I expect you are waiting their in that bleak and lonely place wondering if I am sleeping with someone else. I have to tell you I am ” The bathos was amusing though I felt the slap of wet fish across my face. I was to discover that Sue Melling was not the first or by any means the best for that kind of wit.

My arrival gulped at his cola.

“You want to see your room?”

He said “Man, you are insane. Those dogs, did you not see the dogs?”

“Hey” said I “I am the sane one; it is the others who are crazy. You will meet them in the morning and understand me.”

It was a joke, if such it was, gone flat. I had put too much sincerity into the remark.

“Look” he said, more nervous, “Can you take me back to the airport”

The engine turned, the dead dogs were still on the road, I drove around the corpses, the guy was already tense enough. The sun was rising on my next return, the desert heat high. The crows were already deep into the dogs, the guts spilled to the tarmac and the smell strong sickly sweet and stained into my memory thirty years later

At breakfast Jack Winton asked eyebrows high forehead wrinkled “Did you fetch him” I did, “He left again, I dropped him back”. He gathered up his bacon, chewed, looking at me, always disconcerting, shrugged, got up, walked out. Brian said to the gathered navvies “Let’s go to work”

Basset

In south east Kent, the country side, August 2009 there was that year sunshine every day. The town I retreated to Sandwich, genteel, secret, houses luxurious behind discreet walls. There were invitations to lunch in London and to Suffolk, to “spend a couple of days”. My company is now of the well retired, or well divorced, those who are discreet. I am home.

Back to the village were I was born. The country side, Nonington the place I spent a childhood a dull adolescence before I went to that sailor town. On leaving college in Portsmouth where my knees were taught to tremble behind the Wilshire Lamb, I drifted then to London, drove trucks for Andy Voyais Plumbing dropping new copper pipes direct from the builders merchants to the scrap merchants and then back again, all signed in and out as Prince Charles. One morning fine, September, as now thirty one years on, I changed my overalls for a suit in the back of the transit in St Peters St, went in the side door of 4 Milbank, and became a Civil Servant, an employee of the Crown Agents.

It was a pleasant job, I did not miss my Transit Van. Chris Wilson showed me how to fill in forms, introduced me to form design, John Pragnell, big in the church introduced me to pornography circulated through the Dip. “You won’t want that” said Jim, a pipe smoking senior, “You can get plenty of the real Drip round here at your age.” He was right about that, "let’s go down the pipes, at lunch time, it will only take tenn minutes". I was, even after college in Portsmouth surprised about that. It was all fun, sex drink, Government, until in 1978, or thereabouts, on behalf of the Crown Agents I went to the Peoples Democratic Republic of South Yemen.

I had spent beyond my means, the cpf had gotten high. Ted Saunders, the lover of my boss, Doris, a lady direct from Le Carre, said “If you apply for that job you will get it. You can regret it. If you go there you will never come back.” I stayed four months in Yemen, but Ted was right. Once gone I did not come back from seeing a life made of betrayal, brief love, disappointment, revenge and laughter. Cigarettes, wine and Basset. But hey, back home, here comes a tale: sex, murder, mayhem? That is what they like to hear.

After the PDRY, a country that no longer exists, came Mauritania, Guniea Conarkry, Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, then, one March morning in 1985 I set out to Dar es Salaam to be for one year the Crown Agents Representative in Tanzania. I was a very proud Basset that day.

In the great sadness of old age I remember that day of hope and opitimsism.

Coming home I visited family, mother, brother, sister, said hello, saw their children. I am a remote Uncle, remote since none of my love affairs have led to issue. A couple of terminations, "I am very keen to have a child but not with you". Julie had a lovely daughter later in life.

It has been a homecoming and a good bye. I recuperated, told them I must leave again since one comes home to die and say good bye and that is done. I set about the cashing up, the attendance at my mothers eightieth birthday, Christmas Day 2009. I could be a celeration and funeral farewell in th house my father built. I have outlived his life span by a year already. I planned then to set off on one last suicidal adventure with the last of my cash and life. It would be a good blog, there will be readers, for the murders, sex or mayhem?