Silent War Read online

  DAVID FIDDIMORE

  The Silent War

  PAN BOOKS

  For the National Service veterans of Suez

  . . . and of Korea, Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus, and all those other dirty little wars they were led into by ungrateful governments that should have known better.

  God bless you boys.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  PART THREE

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  PART ONE

  This Is Not a War

  Chapter One

  Straighten up and fly right

  David Watson had been a squadron leader and a drunk the last time I had seen him in 1947. Now it looked as if someone had cleaned him up again, and the silver bars doing the ‘Beer barrel polka’ on his shoulders said that the silly buggers upstairs had made him a wing commander. Bollocks. I was in a scruffy office in a seedy part of North London, and he was asking me, ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?’

  I probably sniffed: I had a cold. ‘Would it matter if I was . . . or had been?’

  ‘Yes. You couldn’t come back to the Service.’

  ‘I don’t want to come back to the Service. All that bullshit’s behind me now.’

  ‘No it isn’t. You are still in the Reserve even if you haven’t attended any of your obligatory annual parades, so you’re liable to be called up at times of national emergency.’

  ‘In that case yes I was, and am. Can I go home now?’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got a CP membership card somewhere – it was an accident by the way, but lucky for me. You can’t have me back.’

  He leaned back in his chair and said, ‘Yes I can, because we happen to want men with your old-fashioned skills at the moment. I forgive you for being a Communist. Welcome back to the RAF, Charlie, and start calling me sir, there’s a good fellow. Care for a snifter?’

  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: bollocks.

  The last national emergency I’d danced in had been the Berlin Airlift. It didn’t like me one bit, and tried to kill me in a Dakota smash. I didn’t like it back, and consequently didn’t return to the Fatherland. To be strictly honest I had little choice in the matter: the War Office banned me. It’s a long story, and one that might amuse you one day. For once the Germans and the Brits had agreed about something: neither wanted me to set foot in Germany again. I never imagined that the RAF would want me back after that.

  Watson had been my last proper RAF senior officer, although the word proper is probably on a shoogly peg, because at the time he was heading up a radio station in a halfway house between the old Empire Code and Cipher School, and the GCHQ it later became. In those days he was all tweed jackets, leather elbow patches and pipes. It had been meant to be a cushy number for my last few months in blue, but hadn’t turned out that way. Four years later he called me up, and told me to report to an office over Woolworths on Kentish Town High Street . . . and here I was, feeling like a snake which has been picked up by the tail. I wanted to lash out and bite someone. The bastards couldn’t do this to me again. He picked up a green telephone hand set and told it, ‘The bottle and two glasses please, Daisy. You’ll remember Mr Bassett. He’s coming out to play with us again.’ As he replaced the receiver he asked me, ‘You do remember Daisy? I had her at Cheltenham.’

  ‘If she’s still with you she’s even madder than you are.’

  ‘Sir. Madder than you are, sir.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Yes you bloody do, Charlie. Bloody done and bloody dusted . . . so not so much of the bloody lip from now on.’

  Daisy walked in with a nice bottle of Dimple and two cut-glass tumblers on a silver tray. My favourite kind of woman is the type I see walking towards me carrying my drink. She’d even remembered that I watered my whisky, and had brought a small glass jug of the stuff. It was the first time I’d seen her in uniform, and uniforms do something for a woman.

  She smiled. ‘Welcome back, Mr Bassett; we’ve all missed you.’

  It did occur to me to wonder who we were. Watson poured, I watered and we clinked glasses – I thought I might as well get a drink out of him, because I’d already worked out that this could only be a bad dream. He said, ‘We can relax now, Charlie . . .’

  Even although the word curdled in my mouth I called him sir.

  ‘I’ve already got a job, sir, running a cuddly little airline down on the South Coast. It’s where you phoned me. I’m sure that my boss will argue it’s in the national interest to leave me exactly where I am.’

  ‘Your cuddly little airline is in the same state as all of the other cuddly little airlines, Charlie: practically skint. The government is handing out precious few contracts these days, and the big outfits are hoovering up the freight work before you even have time to offer. Hard times are upon us, Charlie: that was a book title once, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Dickens. Unreadable.’ What did I know? ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Your Mr Halton has already been spoken to. He’ll be glad for us to take you off his hands for a few months, as long as we pay your salary . . . and don’t take it personally; there are dozens of bods all over the country sitting exactly where you’re sitting, getting the same bad news. I have three more of you to do today.’

  ‘What about my job?’

  ‘It will be kept open for you . . . they have to do that by law. I understand that your secretary is going to be promoted to company secretary, and sit in your chair until you get back. All’s well that ends well.’ I remembered how someone often used to say that in 1947. It irritated me then as well . . . and Elaine must have known the score before I set off, but didn’t tell me. I’d have to watch her. That was interesting.

  ‘Where exactly is this national emergency you’re packing me off to, sir?’

  ‘Egypt I expect: the wogs are getting uppity again. Time to get your knees brown, Charlie, and sand in your shoes.’

  ‘What’s my alternative?’

  ‘Jankers for failure to report. Maybe even with the Brown Jobs at Aldershot. They’re a bad lot, I understand.’ For the uninformed among you – Brown Jobs are soldiers: the guys with guns, and khaki suits, who walk everywhere. They have a penal colony at Aldershot.

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘. . . or you could always get married instead. We’re only taking single men.’ He raised his glass again, and an eyebrow. ‘Cheerio.’

  Ah.

  I suddenly felt Old Man Halton’s hand jerking my chain. I’d proposed to his ward in 1948, grown less keen on her with every passing minute, and had been putting off the evil day. Halton hadn’t said anything but I sensed he was taking a dim view of it. The bastards had me now, hadn’t they? Get married, or get chased round the pyramids by a bunch of wogs armed with goolie knives.

  I raised my glass back at him. ‘That’s it then; back to bloody war I suppose. Cheers. Where do I get measured for a tropical rig?’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘. . . sir.’

  ‘We’ll take care of all that. After you’ve had a couple of refreshers I expect . . .
and this is not a war by the way.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  I expected his nagging little sir again, but he just shook his head. ‘It’s a police action.’

  ‘What does that mean when it’s at home?’

  ‘That they don’t have to pay your dependants a decent pension when you cop it.’

  I swirled my drink in the glass, and watched the circles it made. ‘They think of everything, don’t they, sir?’

  ‘Apparently; but in your case, Charlie, I suspect they will live to regret it. Now all you have to do is sort out your bloody father.’

  ‘The old man? What’s it got to do with him?’

  ‘He was arrested three days ago at the Cenotaph. He disrupted the Remembrance service. Didn’t anyone tell you?’

  Charing Cross nick. I suspect that by the time I was in my twenties I was more familiar with the inside of police stations than your average Joe. It hadn’t always been my fault, and the only advantage I can see is that I could generally get up the front steps and through the door without my apprehensions on parade. In the 1950s, having got that far you usually found yourself facing a front desk behind which, if you were lucky, was a desk sergeant.

  After I introduced myself this one introduced himself back as Sergeant Pry . . . and then paused as if his name should mean something to me. Maybe he had won the George Cross when my back was turned. He continued, ‘So, you’re Albert Bassett’s son?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Less than he deserved. He was up in front of the magistrate yesterday and was admonished.’

  ‘What for?’

  Pry had a kindly face. ‘Shouldn’t you ask him yourself, son?’

  ‘I will, when I catch up with him. I didn’t even know he was in town. He lives just outside Glasgow.’

  ‘He made a mockery of the service at the Cenotaph, and was eventually charged with being drunk and disorderly, being a public nuisance and resisting arrest. He’s a bit of a tough old bird, your old man.’

  ‘He was one of the Old Contemptibles, and served all the way through to 1919 . . . I can never remember him being anything else except tough.’

  That wasn’t true. He had wept openly at the funerals of my mother and sister.

  ‘The magistrate is an old soldier as well; he threw out the drunk and resisting charges, and only admonished on the public nuisance. I don’t know why we even bothered.’

  ‘What exactly did he do?’

  ‘He sang.’

  ‘That’s what we usually do at the Remembrance parade isn’t it? March up and down, shout silly orders at each other, and sing hymns? Hitler used to do that sort of thing as well.’

  He frowned, but ignored that last bit. ‘He managed to wriggle his way near the front, and bawl out some of the old soldiers’ songs, but with very disrespectful lyrics – disrespectful to the Top Brass in attendance that is. I understand that the Duke of Gloucester smiled, and even Her uncrowned Majesty’s lips gave a little twitch.’

  ‘Good old Dad. I must find him and buy him a pint. Where did he go to?’

  ‘He gave the Union Jack Club as his London address, but I don’t know if he’s still there.’ Then he added, ‘You don’t seem all that respectful yourself.’

  ‘They just called me up again,’ I explained.

  ‘Do you good I expect. Teach you some manners.’

  I had a phrase waiting for him, but didn’t use it. I didn’t want to be the second person in my family to be arrested inside a week. As I turned away I saw a framed theatre bill on the wall. It advertised a show called the Great Tay Kin – a Japanese Mystery, but its star billing was reserved for one Paul Pry. I turned back, and asked the Sergeant,

  ‘That your father?’

  ‘No.’ He grinned. ‘It was Granddad. It dates from 1885, and Toole’s Theatre stood on this very spot. The old guy was on the halls there.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘A Zep got him and Grandma in 1916. Jerry bastards.’

  ‘Bastards.’ We could agree about something anyway. Suddenly he reached into a trouser pocket, and from it handed me a half-crown.

  ‘Buy your old man that pint from me. Tell him it was bloody funny.’

  I gave him a little salute, then turned and got out of there while I was still ahead.

  I crossed the Thames on the walkway running alongside Hunger-ford Bridge, and got caught in a November squall halfway across. My old American raincoat no longer kept out the rain the way it did years ago, so it was a damp Charlie who dropped anchor alongside his father in a dirty little pub on the corner of Stamford Street. The receptionist at the club had taken pity on me, and told me where to find him.

  The old man didn’t even look round when I took the stool alongside him. He said, ‘You took your time.’

  ‘I’m not bloody psychic, Dad. You could have told me you were in trouble.’

  ‘I wasn’t in trouble, son. I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do.’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Only after you’ve set up the beer. You’re so bloody slow to put your hand in your pocket I sometimes think you were fathered by a Yorkshireman.’

  ‘Maybe I just take after you.’

  After a couple of rounds he said, ‘I just didn’t want to embarrass you.’

  ‘Don’t ever worry about that. I embarrass myself far more than you ever could.’ The words didn’t come out in exactly the right order, but he understood me.

  ‘You know I ain’t scared of doing my bit, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes?’ Doing his bit had included soldiering through the First War from start to finish as a Pioneer, and then joining up again in 1945 to help the British Army dig holes all over Holland and Germany.

  ‘I got fed up with it, that’s all.’

  ‘Fed up with Glasgow?’

  ‘No, don’t be daft. Why should anyone get fed up with Glasgow? – it has the best boozers in the world.’ I didn’t know if he meant the pubs or the people in them, so I kept shtum, and let him finish what he’d started. ‘I got fed up with the war.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘All of them. Malaya, Korea and now bloody Kenya . . . it’s never-bloody-ending. We can’t be at war for ever: it’s got to stop somewhere. My war was supposed to be the war to end wars, remember?’

  ‘What brought this on?’

  ‘Mrs Johnson did.’

  ‘Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘She’s a nice widow who lives underneath me.’ He had a redbrick tenement flat. But that was interesting: I hadn’t heard him mention her before. ‘They called her son up last month. He’s only seventeen, and he already knows he’s off to Kenya after his basic: fucking Kenya is not worth fighting for – it was the last straw.’

  ‘What about all the coffee?’

  ‘What’s wrong with a bottle of old Camp coffee? . . . Anyway I thought that someone had got to do something about it, so I decided to go down to the Cenotaph and tell the bastards a few home truths about fighting and dying for your country. I thought I might get in the papers.’ What was wrong with Camp coffee was that it wasn’t coffee at all, but I wasn’t prepared to contradict him.

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘No. Everyone ignored me, so I started to sing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I sang “They’ll never believe me”, and a couple of others. We had some soldiers’ verses for them in my day. That’s when the cops got nasty.’

  ‘The desk sergeant at Agar Street gave me half a crown to buy you a pint. He said it was bloody funny.’

  ‘The magistrate said, “Even if I was to sympathize with you, Mr Bassett, I could not condone your disrespect to our young sovereign. You are to consider yourself formally admonished.” What do you think he meant by that?’

  ‘He agreed with you, of course, but he wasn’t going to say so. So did the copper; that’s why he asked me to buy you a pint. You mi
ght have started something after all.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ He brightened up a bit. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

  ‘They called me up again, Dad. They want me to go to Egypt.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  At least my father and I had reached a stage where we had a vocabulary in common.

  We got drunk. Until his dying day my father was a better drinker than me. We slept back to back on his bed at the Club, like a married couple who were no longer talking.

  The next day I went back to Lympne-sur-mer, which is where the airline I worked for was based.

  My secretary Elaine said, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ as soon as I walked in. I just gave her the look, went through to my office and shut the door. Firmly. One of the few things I’d learned about the women who liked me is that they could stand anything except being denied access. They needed to see my face, as if from that they could work out what was going on upstairs. Elaine had a son who was three now, and I was his godfather. It was only by the grace of God that I hadn’t become the real thing. She had had no more children, and her figure and looks had come back with a bang – forgive the pun. I still fancied her like mad, but the only times we had touched since her boy was born was when she handed me a mug of char. Anyway, I’d met her old man and liked him, so that complicated things.

  I gave her ten minutes before she’d try again. She came in after just seven, after knocking on my office door. That was interesting. To my recollection she’d never knocked before either.

  ‘You bloody should be!’ I told her. ‘You’re a treacherous little git, and I don’t love you any more.’ That made her smile; but it was a sad little smile, not a come-on.

  ‘They made me promise not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Mr Halton and the man in Army uniform.’

  ‘You’re not in the Army, Elaine. You didn’t have to pay them any attention.’

  ‘He said I could go to prison if I told anyone before it was out. They didn’t want people to know we were mobilizing . . .’ She let drop a couple of tears; though I’m sure they were deliberate. How do women manage that?