Without A Song

Chapter Six: Who is she?

I mulled over my present predicament. Casey of all people demanded an answer for my antics, not that she'd openly said anything of the sort, not that I gave her much chance. It was something that I felt I must do. I also knew I needed to talk with Terri Golding. Terri had always been my best friend outside of my marriage to Sue. Maybe she was my only friend now? Whenever either of us were down we would reach out for the other. I wondered for a moment if Sue ever thought there was anything more to the long distance social friendship that Terri and I enjoyed. I'd told Sue about all who I met and worked with in the Falklands, there was never a reason not to.

For Terri and me our history was forged in the Falklands Islands of a not so white Christmas. While folks at home in Britain celebrated just over two thousands of us secured the sovereign territory in the South Atlantic. I was there thanks to another favour born out of the entente cordiale between the Australian and British governments and their bureaucracies. Bowmaurie wanted to be seen giving valued support to the Poms, the Poms wanted a man who could be seen to do just that. They got me and told Bowmaurie I was going to the Falklands but I had to leave Sue behind with the rest of the Rapier squadron in Wiltshire. She didn't like that. I was detached to the Mount Benview air force station in the Falklands when I was freshly married and short on experience. I was guaranteed twelve to eighteen weeks away from Sue. She was not impressed, the sixteen thousand miles round trips making weekend visits home impossible. Sue may have said little but her body language spoke volumes, she was not a happy bunny. I didn't seek out a replacement for Sue whenever I was away but I always felt happier with female company

instead of the blokes, maybe Freud could have alluded to a link to my absent mother. Having the rank of a Flying Officer kept me on the saner side of madness instead of attached to a bar, joining in with the baiting against the regular army units. I didn't have my Sue but I did find Terri Golding. She was, as our American cousins might say, one smart cookie.

When we first met she was a Flight Lieutenant air-traffic controller talking to me over the air traffic radio. The second meeting was at a fitness session in the multi-purpose gym where she introduced me to Flight Sergeant Bill Whittaker. Bill and a RAF corporal from Germany were looking for volunteers to put on a pantomime and over the next three months I donned the garb of the pantomime dame to keep me out of trouble. The role occupied my mind and gave me something else to do besides island hopping in and out of a Puma helicopter or playing footsie with the sea lions. I received plenty of acting advice from the squadron members and mock derisory comments from everyone else. Bill and the corporal produced a version of the Sleeping Beauty pantomime in the camp's night club, ably accompanied by two dozen volunteers many of whom hadn't acted before in their lives. Terri played the good fairy godmother and gave me tips on make-up and wearing a brassière. We shared some good times, some intimate times when one or the other needed cheering up and some great times too. It was good to have someone our own age to talk to without hidden agendas. We made history in the quiet moments, social activities and we bonded a friendship that would transcend the miles and the years that would soon come between us.

Terri and her husband Drummond were at Gotenhald, an RAF station in Germany that was in the throes of closing down. Drummond flew the latest variant of the Harrier GR7 jump jet and between them they'd had Tristan who was five years old when Terri and I first met. Drummond's mother was living with them in their German married quarter which allowed Terri and Drummond to keep their full-time jobs in the RAF. While we were in the Falklands, Gotenhald would move its aircraft, personnel and support lock, stock

and barrel a couple of hundred kilometres west to the Dutch/German international border as the unification of the former east and west Germanic nations took hold. The nature of our jobs meant that Terri and I would see many parts of the Falklands together, visiting the various isolated settlements that had watchtowers and Rapier placements watching over them. The air traffic controllers often went to get first-hand experience of scanning the distant horizons for the Argentine reconnaissance aircraft the old-fashioned way, with eyes and binoculars, where radar was ineffective. Down on the ground the Rapier batteries had similar problems. If we'd ever had to fire on an airborne target it would be from the hip and hope we shot the enemy down first, the terrain made our little radar units almost ineffective. However we were bloody good at that and had the war game medals to prove it. On Mount Benview the air traffic control tower was next to the rapier squadron's workshops and Terri would come over when the aircraft were airborne for cups of tea. It was a company of like minds, a port in a storm and it gave us freedom to work on each other's lines and movements for the pantomime. During my seven years of marriage, my time with Terri was the only time I came sexually close to another woman. The last time Terri and I actually spoke it was on the telephone, until then all other contact had been through snail mail. Eventually Terri and Drummond returned to the UK and she left the RAF to work on her degree that would take her into Ritten's Bank. She was on the rising escalator of a fast-track bank manager-in-waiting and could be expected to be running her own branch two years later.