40 The Times Magazine
officials “lied” about him, whether on social
media or in background briefings. He says he
saw no British Army soldiers at the airport,
just the military attaché assigned to stop him
from posting on social media, which he finds
ironic given he was still in the terminal when
the Ministry of Defence tweeted out that he
and his animals had taken off on an empty
flight with the assistance of the British army.
He says they attempted smear campaigns,
alleging the dogs were diseased. He says
The Mail on Sunday published a story that
the dogs had been tested by Defra, even after
a Defra official had told the journalist they
hadn’t. He has a screenshot of an email
from the journalist saying his sources were
“political”. All this clearly preoccupies him
two months after leaving Kabul.
There’s one question everyone I know
wants answered: why couldn’t he just leave the
dogs and put all his considerable energy into
helping desperate people, the sort of desperate
people we in the UK saw handing their babies
over the airport fence? “If the army couldn’t
get people out, how the hell could I?” OK.
But was it really so important to take all those
dogs out? “Who would look after them?” he
asks, his frustration audible. “What’s the point
in running an animal welfare programme if
you’re just going to put the dogs on the street?
Some are people’s pets. What do I tell that
soldier? ‘Sorry, I left your dog or cat in Kabul’?
I can’t do that. I made a commitment.” He
asks me what kind of people think he could
do that. I say people watching the scenes
unfold from here. “Well, people say, ‘He
should’ve done this or that,’ but unless you
were there, how do you know what I could
and couldn’t have done?”
Both he and his wife seem dazed, talking
non-stop in a mad, breathless rush, including
every detail in their stories, unable any more
to weigh up the importance of each fact.
Farthing has a broad West Country accent
despite being born in Essex and occasionally
refers to himself in the third person: “While
the dogs were in quarantine here, Pen was
in quarantine too.”
As a child, Farthing (real name, Paul)
was interested in “climbing, climbing and
the Marines”. He was an army cadet. He had
posters of military stuff on his walls: maps of
the Falklands, tanks, campaign propaganda. It
was aged 13 at his semi in Essex, watching the
Falklands conflict on the evening news, that
he first saw the Marines (“and the Paras, I’ll
give them that”). They were “yomping” across
rocky terrain to fight the Argentinians.
He turned to his mum and said, “I’m going
to do that,” and she watched for a bit and
told him he was most definitely not. But he
persisted. He went to the library to research
the Royal Marines, and learnt that you needed
to be superfit, super-determined. With this in
mind, he ran his first half-marathon at 14. At
18, he joined up on the first day he was able.
“It’s billed as the toughest infantry training
in the world,” he says. “I absolutely loved it.
See up there [he points to the wall where his
green beret and badges are framed], the little
round badge on the top left? That’s the King’s
Badge, awarded – only if there is someone
deserving – to the best all-round recruit in
training. So that’s what I got. That’s how much
I wanted to be a Marine.” (He corrects me
every time I say “soldier”. “No, Marine.”)
I ask how they are both coping with life
back in the UK. Markhus, an outdoor sports
instructor who taught Afghan girls climbing,
says they feel too guilty to go on holiday or
rest. They spend all day on their laptops or
offering assistance to the Afghan staff who are
resettling in Exeter, and the evening drinking
“too much” in the pub. Farthing is not as fit as
he was, working out every single day in Kabul
(although he still has that Marine’s triangle:
wide shoulders, wasp waist). “All we ever
talked about in Kabul was going climbing.
Now we’re back it just doesn’t seem like it’s
really that important,” he says. “Like, some of
Kaisa’s girls are in refugee camps so we can’t
be going, ‘We’ll have a nice evening out
climbing.’ It just doesn’t seem right.”
Of the two, Markhus is more buoyant,
with a fatalistic Nordic take on life. One of
her roles appears to be morale-boosting. When
I ask what Farthing was like in school, she
answers for him. “Best in class. Nerdy. Always
the best. Always complete the mission.”
They had different approaches to Kabul too,
initially. Hers was “efficiency mode” – she was
happy to sleep on the floor, eat rice, shower
under a single dribbly pipe and spend evenings
alone painting and learning Dari (Afghan
Persian). When Farthing first visited her digs,
he asked where the peanut butter and toast
was, and on learning there wasn’t any, told
her she wouldn’t last long living like this. “And
then he invited me over and made salmon and
mash potato. And I’m from Norway, so I was
like, ‘Oh, my God, fish!’ And I realised that
there is a different way to live in Kabul.” In early
2020 she moved into his spare bedroom “and
then soon after I moved in to his bedroom”.
They married in April this year in the Red
Rocks mountains in America because it was
one of the few places they could fly from a red
list country (Farthing refused “to pay £2,500
to sit in a quarantine hotel”). Markhus shows
me a wedding photo. She’s in a white lace
dress and Heidi braids holding a “bouquet”
of clamps and ropes. Farthing, grinning, isin a dark suit and white tie. She says the age
difference – he is 52, she 30 – isn’t a problem
because Farthing is “ageless”, although their
generational attitudes are sometimes at odds.
She wants to be free and ambitious in her
outlook, whereas Farthing can be “strict”
and a little old-school. For instance, he asked
Markhus’ father, a Norwegian doctor, for her
hand in marriage. (“Why are you asking me?”
he replied. “Ask her!”) And when I arrived at
the station, he opened the car door and stood
to one side in parade rest.
When he leaves the room, Markhus leaps
up to turn on the heating. “Pen and I are also
arguing about the heating because I’m used
to wooden houses and they’re warm and here
it’s the opposite,” she says. “He keeps turning
it off. I keep turning it on. And he’s like, ‘It’s
costing a lot of money.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah?
What’s the problem?’ He’s very disciplined.
I think 95 per cent of that is his military
background, 4 per cent is his culture and
1 per cent is age. When I say, ‘Why can’t this
happen?’ he’s like, ‘It shouldn’t be that way,
but also you have to accept it.’ And I say,
‘I don’t have to accept anything.’ ”
Markhus says she stood out in Kabul, being
some 5ft 10in and with gas-blue eyes. To be
honest, she stands out in Exeter too. She starts
to say that she thought the UK would be more
similar to Norway – “the most equal country
in the world” – but perhaps hearing a note
of disappointment in her tone as he returns,
Farthing reminds her that she’s only been
here a month. I ask him if he’ll go back to
Afghanistan. “I was hoping to go back for
the end of this month,” he says. “That’s why
I’m growing this thing.” He strokes his beard.
“Biden’s frozen our bank accounts – absolute
idiot of a man – so I’m going to have to take
money back to our staff still there because
they’re looking after our donkeys.” There are
12 left in total, as well as two horses, one bull
called David and a goat called Jaja. “We hope
we can restart a working animal programme.”
He says the radar at Kabul airport needs
to be fixed before he can get a flight in. “And
there’s one other problem: two days ago, the
Taliban raided our clinic. They took my two
vets who are there for questioning, showed
them pictures of me and asked where I was.”
Is that because they’d know he’d killed
members of the Taliban during the war?
“I fought the Taliban. I don’t know whether
I killed any,” he says. “So yeah, I’m really
truly not sure what I’ll do at the minute.” nnowzad.comHE HAS NO MEMORY OF HIS EXPLETIVE-STUDDED
CALL TO THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE, HE SAYS