The Decision Read Online Free PDF Page B

with Josie, but with several other girls as well.
    At one stage he felt sick and dizzy, and had to go outside; Josie followed him, sat down on the steps with him and put her arm round him.
    ‘Poor old soldier,’ she said. ‘I know what it’s like there, that basic training, me brother did it last year. You must be all in.’
    ‘Nah,’ said Matt firmly, ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’
    ‘That’s OK.’
    She turned to him, pulled his face to hers and pushed her tongue into his mouth; it was a bit of a surprise, but very pleasant. Especially given the hazy feeling. They staggered up the street a bit, found an alley where he kissed her back very thoroughly and pushed his hand up her sweater onto her breast. Josie seemed to like that. God, he’d forgotten what they felt like, breasts. Hadn’t had the energy to think about them even, the last few weeks. After a while, he moved to her bottom, which was firm and extremely responsive; he felt her grinding her hips into his and he pushed his hand gingerly up her skirt, feeling his way towards her panties. But this was forbidden territory. She pushed his hand down again.
    ‘No, Matt,’ she said, suddenly sober.
    He didn’t care and returned to her breasts. He knew the rules. He’d done pretty well, he thought, really. Later, going home on the tube, she sat with her head on his shoulder.
    ‘It’s been really nice,’ she said sleepily. ‘I like a soldier boy.’
    Matt grinned at her.
    ‘Same again next leave?’
    ‘Yeah. What do you think?’
    When they got back to the camp, they felt like old timers. There was a new intake of raw, terrified recruits; Matt went out of his way to speak to a few in the NAAFI, and tell them it wasn’t too bad.
    ‘It suddenly all begins to make sense, you’ll be OK.’
    ‘You heard about poor old Happy?’ said Charles when he saw him. ‘He’s being sent off to Fattening Camp.’
    Happy was their nickname for the undersized Walton, partly as reference to his size (‘You could play one of them dwarfs,’ Nobby Tucker, a Geordie they had befriended, had said one morning), partly his sunny nature.
    ‘What!’
    ‘Yeah. They say he needs building up. Might get deferred. Poor sod.’
    Being deferred was the ultimate nightmare; it meant getting returned to a new unit. Which meant losing your mates and a dreadful sense of going back to square one.
    Fattening Camp was on Salisbury Plain, near Aldershot; men who were particularly thin and unfit were sent literally to be fattened up.
    ‘But ’e’s as strong as a bloody ox,’ said Matt.
    ‘I know. Try telling them that, though.’
    ‘Poor old bugger.’
    Men were being hauled out now to do their USB (Unit Selection Board). It was the first screening for POM (Potential Officer Material); mostly predictable, anyone who had been to public school and a few wild cards who showed the necessary leadership qualities got picked, and those who passed would be sent off to do the War Office Selection board, known affectionately as Wosby, at Andover.
    Charles was summoned together with the one other public schoolboy in the hut; so to his delight were Matt and a couple of others. Matt went off to, as he put it, ‘blind them with my fucking potential’. He was pretty confident; if anyone had the gift of the gab he reckoned he did.
    The USB procedure was an interview with the CO, no more than that. Matt failed. The only non-public-school boy who passed was a grammarschool boy, who spoke what was known as BBC English. Matt was very upset and angry; Charles tried to comfort him.
    ‘They probably didn’t like your ugly face. Doesn’t mean a thing, really.’
    ‘Yes, it does,’ said Matt bitterly. ‘Why else would that wanker Johnson get through?’
    ‘Well,’ Charles hesitated. ‘Well, I s’pose it was just … just luck.’
    ‘No, it fucking wasn’t. It was because he’d been to fucking grammar school. Knew how to talk and that.’
    ‘Oh. Matt, I’m sure—’
    ‘No, it’s me that’s sure.