The Forgotten War Page 14

  ‘ “Snag it.” Amazing, isn’t he? I hope he doesn’t burn himself out in a few years.’

  I moved off from them during the next number: something ragtime. I was feeling a bit like a gooseberry. I saw a face I knew above a dark floral-print dress. She danced by with a boy who looked sixteen too. They stopped close to me.

  ‘Hi, Charlie,’ Alison said, ‘this is Stacey. Say hello, Stacey.’ Stacey mumbled ‘Hello.’ Then he shut his eyes and rocked on his heels.

  ‘He’s drunk too much, too quickly,’ Alison said. ‘Let’s find him somewhere to sit.’ We found him a wooden chair against the wall. He sat with his head down, clutched between his hands. He groaned.

  ‘Sorry. Be OK in a few minutes.’

  Alison said, ‘He will be too, amazingly quick recovery rate.’

  ‘He’d be better off outside in the fresh air.’

  ‘No, that would finish him off, although I could do with some myself. How about you?’

  I said, ‘OK,’ and allowed myself to be led by the hand back out into the car park. Alison watched me fill and light a pipe. I asked, ‘Does Bella know that you’re here?’

  ‘Not exactly, Charlie. She didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘That means she trusts you.’

  She gnawed her upper lip, which probably meant I’d said something wrong. ‘Time to go inside again. Stace will be coming to about now.’ She was still holding my hand as we walked up to him, and let it go just before he noticed us. She whispered, ‘Can you take me home if he gets too bad?’ How bad was too bad? I wondered. And bad at what? But although I saw her dance past another couple of times during the evening, I drove home alone.

  I slept alone in an empty house. The chicken serenade got into my room in the morning. A lot of chickens having breakfast make a lot of noise. So do excited dogs. I walked over to the bedroom window. Alison was in the fields, releasing the chickens from their long low houses. She was still dressed in her dancing frock, but was wearing wellingtons under it. After a minute she stopped what she was doing, turned, and waved to me, with a big smile on her face. Women seem to have an inbuilt radar that tells them when men are watching, and from where. I waved back.

  Downstairs I did something that I hadn’t done since before the war: boiled a couple of eggs myself, and ate them with lashings of salt, and toast soldiers. I felt the lightness of being about fourteen again. Alison walked in, made a pot of tea, and sat down at the table. Up close, the colour beneath her eyes told you that she’d been up all night. And up close you could just smell chickens. She had a couple of downy feathers in her hair: I reached over and took them. She whispered, ‘Thank you,’ blew on her tea to cool it, paused and added, ‘But you won’t tell Mum, will you?’

  ‘You almost asked me that last night.’

  ‘Did I? What did you say?’

  ‘I think I said OK. Don’t you think that Bella knows anyway? Mums are pretty good at that sort of thing.’ I was suddenly lost for something to say to her, so I said, ‘I’ve never been to a jazz club before: I suppose that I was always too busy.’

  ‘You can catch up while you’re staying with us. Take me, if you like. Mum would probably let me go if she thought that you were there to look after me.’

  ‘Then she’d be making a mistake, wouldn’t she? Besides . . .’

  ‘. . . I suppose you’re the sort of man who has a rule about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, kid, there’s a rule. Shall I help you collect the eggs? I haven’t done that since I was small.’

  Do you know how many eggs a thousand chickens can lay when they’ve got nothing else to do all night? We collected hundreds, and then we had to wash them and stack them on trays in a cool shed. It took us most of the morning. I only broke two. Then I put on my new blazer and went out beer hunting.

  On Monday there was a small queue of cars waiting to turn off the main road into Benhall at 0730. It was like turning up at a factory. I thought that I’d see what time my people got in for work. Both huts were already open: Mrs Boulder was sitting at her radio with the earphones over her head. It was a pity she’d never learned to smile. Sensing my presence, she turned, nodded, removed the phones and said, ‘There’s a big box of some sort in your room. It’s wrapped in brown paper. I decided not to go near it.’

  I decided that Boulder was brighter than she looked. Then she surprised me by saying two things. The first was, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? The kettle’s not long boiled.’

  ‘Thanks; I’ll just pop over the road, and drink it when I come back. I’ll only be a couple of mins.’

  She looked embarrassed as she delivered the other surprise: embarrassed but determined to get her message across. ‘Well done on Thursday night. You really took the bastard to pieces, didn’t you? Mrs Miller said you were going to bring us luck.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Boulder, but don’t mind my asking . . . how do you know anything happened?’

  ‘I was your angel on Thursday night. I heard it all. My third language is Russian.’

  ‘My angel?’

  ‘Didn’t they tell you that you were being monitored?’

  ‘Yes, but not from here . . . OK . . . I understand. Thanks, and yes, we really turned the bastard over, didn’t we?’

  When I said that the side of her mouth twitched. She was trying to smile. We’d have to work on that.

  When I stepped into the other Hut 7 Weronka confronted me, and said, ‘Was he a Russian you killed on Thursday, or a Pole?’

  ‘A Russian, I think. That’s what he was speaking . . . and I’m not sure he died. It was nothing to do with me, in any case.’

  ‘No matter. You were there for us, so well done anyway. One to us.’

  ‘Does it matter if he was a Russian or a Pole? He was trying to kill us first, and he couldn’t fly for shit: he was a novice and all out of shape. He shouldn’t have been up there.’

  ‘If it had been a Pole I would have had a Mass said for him, but essentially it doesn’t matter: no. Well done again.’ Then she kissed me Frog fashion, on both cheeks.

  ‘That’s what Mrs Boulder said to me.’

  ‘Then I’d better say so, too,’ Miller said, and I felt suddenly warm all over.

  She’d walked out of her office in her little grey suit. What was it that Kid Ory used to say? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: if the whisky don’t get you, the women must. It was one of the tunes I used to wake up with. Somewhere at the back of my brain a little voice must have whispered here we go again, but I didn’t notice it. Not then. I just wanted to get the clothes off somebody else’s wife again: situation normal.

  ‘I didn’t know that it would be Boulder listening out for me.’

  ‘Whenever you’re out there, one of us will be listening for you, sir. We always listen out for our own officer: it’s the way it works. Make sure that you listen back if ever we talk to you. There’s a huge parcel in your office: what’s in it?’

  ‘I’m just going back to unwrap it; why don’t you come and see? Mrs Boulder’s made me a cup of coffee.’ I wanted her to smile and nod. She smiled and nodded.

  ‘Thank you for the kisses, Ronka,’ I said as we left. ‘You can kiss me again tomorrow.’

  The Pole had a raucous laugh. ‘Kill another bloody Russian first.’

  I had been right first time: bloodthirsty dames and hard work.

  As we walked back to my hut Miller and I didn’t speak, and that felt ominously comfortable. I wondered if Boulder had been listening in when they killed her lover in the cold sky somewhere over in the East. Maybe I could get to hate the Reds as much as I had the Fritzies. It would depend on how hard they tried to kill me.

  In my office we moved the box against one wall before I unwrapped it. I told Miller, ‘I saw the Boss on Saturday. I suggested that we flew on nights other than Thursdays for a while – it will be less exciting if the opposition isn’t waiting.’

  ‘The Russians will be very cross with you for that, Charlie.’ I was pleased tha
t she’d slipped into using my first name as soon as we were alone. I couldn’t have kept the other thing going.

  ‘There was a blind tramp in a long black raincoat dancing by the main gate.’

  ‘That’s Mr Summit. He’s good, isn’t he? He has a sort of timetable but I haven’t worked it out yet. He appears in different places all around town at the same times every week.’

  From inside the box there was a gentle rattling sound, like a dying man clearing his throat. Suddenly I didn’t want to remove the paper. But I did. If the plexiglas had been broken in transit I was in trouble.

  Then Miller screamed. She had that scream that some girls have; like a soprano in overdrive. But it tailed off; didn’t last too long. I squatted down alongside Alice’s plexiglas box. She rattled her tail hello, and then struck savagely. The plastic glass bulged with the blow, and then sprang back. I wondered if it gave her a headache. Clear poison streamed down it. Alice was a diamond-back rattlesnake.

  I said, ‘Hello, Alice.’ Then I turned to Miller, who had gone white. ‘I think she likes you, too.’

  Miller said, ‘That was a perfectly awful thing to do – not warning me.’ Then she made curious little coughing noises. At first I thought that they were sobs; then I realized that she was laughing, and getting her breath back at the same time. She slumped into the spare chair. ‘I’ve got to sit down, Charlie.’ After several deep breaths she said, ‘Don’t do that again: not without telling me first.’

  ‘Don’t you like snakes?’

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Then what’s it doing here?’

  ‘She belongs to an American I know. He’s asked me to look after her for a couple of weeks. He didn’t ask, actually. He just turned up, and left her here.’

  ‘How did he know that you were here? This is supposed to be a top-secret site. And why is she moving around so much? Most snakes just lie there and sleep, don’t they?’

  ‘Tommo has a lot of contacts: I probably wasn’t hard to track. And I think that Alice is hungry: she looks thin.’

  Someone had fixed a nice little label on the top of Alice’s box – it hinged out, and hung down like a pub sign. It read Alice’s Restaurant. Her kills were painted in small matchstick figures on the glass alongside it. There were now six men, and a dog. The dog was new since I’d last seen her.

  ‘What does the sign mean?’

  ‘It means that she’s often eating something in there. I’d like to take her out for a walk,’ I joked, ‘but I don’t think that it would be safe.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody dare while I’m around, Charlie Bassett.’ It was the first time I had heard her swear.

  ‘Don’t worry: just testing.’

  Her smile wasn’t like a girl’s smile any more. It was a grin. Her chin stuck out defiantly. I went over and squatted in front of her, with one knee down. A splinter from the wooden plank floor went into my knee. I was very brave; I didn’t cry out. Her eyes flicked to the door to check that it was closed, and then back to me. That was good. Get it right, Charlie. I gave her the eye-lock and said, ‘I want to kiss you.’

  The grin disappeared. But her eyes were still smiling – I think. They looked very grey. She said, ‘Go and feed your snake, Charlie.’ That could mean anything, couldn’t it? I almost said, ‘That’s precisely what I had in mind,’ but I stood up instead.

  ‘I’ll ask Ming: he’ll know what to do.’

  I turned as I opened the door, and looked back at her. She wasn’t looking at me; she was looking out of the window. This time she was definitely smiling.

  Ming came back an hour later with a live week-old chick. I didn’t ask where it had come from. We lifted back the wire lid of Alice’s box, and dropped the sacrifice in. Alice hit it before it touched the sand she slept on. Miller stopped to watch the hit, which surprised me. We shut the lid and tiptoed out, leaving Alice to get on with the messy bit herself. After Ming left, Miller asked me, ‘Shall we go for a walk at lunchtime?’ If the midday meal was called lunch where she came from, I was going to have to mind my p’s and q’s.

  The big flat water bowl in Alice’s box was dry, so I’d filled it with fresh cold water from a kettle in the small galley. I poured it through the top wire, and made a bit of a mess, but Alice didn’t seem to mind: she immediately crawled over and took a drink. Then she sloshed around in it for a while before sliding into a corner alongside a rotten piece of wood and going to sleep. She had a bulge that had once been a chick about a foot back from her head; she had never looked happier.

  Miller watched her over my shoulder. ‘How long will she sleep?’

  ‘Days.’

  ‘How big is she?’

  ‘About five feet long, and as thick as my arm in places.’

  ‘And she’s very poisonous?’

  ‘I should say. She could kill an elephant with what she’s got in her mouth.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any elephants round here lately.’

  ‘Now you know why, don’t you?’

  ‘What are you going to do about her?’

  ‘Can you borrow me a blanket from somewhere? I’ll throw that over her house, and keep her in the corner until Tommo gets back. Lock the office door every time I’m not in here. Put a Keep out: that means you notice on the door.’

  ‘Tommo’s your American friend?’

  ‘Our relationship is a bit more complicated than that. But you could say friend, yes. When are you going to tell me about the Jedburghs?’

  I had tried to catch her off guard. My mistake.

  ‘I’ll ask the Commander when he gets back. He’s away for a couple of days.’

  ‘So. I’m your boss, but there are things that you can’t tell me without the permission of someone really senior to me?’

  ‘You got it. It’s for your own good, really.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘If you fall into the hands of the Reds you won’t have anything damaging to tell them.’

  I thought about that for a few seconds. ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘That you’ll talk if they catch you alive? Yes. Absolutely.’

  What I’d actually meant was, did she really believe that the Russians would get me some day? But then, she’d answered that as well, hadn’t she?

  Perce phoned on Wednesday, and Piers on Thursday. Perce and Piers: it sounded like a comic double act on a variety bill. I also signed a lot of requisition slips for equipment that I didn’t need or recognize. When I asked Miller what the requisition numbers meant, she pointed me at a shelf of loose-leaf instruction books with an ‘It would be better if you looked them up for yourself, sir.’ I couldn’t be bothered.

  Perce had been out with another team the night before; the first trip all year that hadn’t been done on a Thursday. He said that at the briefing they were told that the trips were being made on different days of the week ‘on the advice of a battle-hardened professional’. I wondered how we’d forgotten that in less than two years, and what sort of morons were really in charge of the show these days.

  ‘Was that you, Charlie? I got the feeling it might be.’

  ‘Nah. I’m just a passenger, like you. Where’d you go?’

  ‘Not allowed to say. I wasn’t as scared this time.’

  ‘Then you’re halfway to being dead already, Perce. Stay scared, or give it up – it gives you an edge.’

  ‘I wish you’d be serious for half a sec.’

  ‘I am being serious,’ I assured him. ‘It’s the curse of the survivor: no one believes us when we’re being serious. Every time I climb a ladder I’m scared these days, let alone getting into a fucking aircraft.’

  ‘Gotta go now, Charlie: good luck next week.’

  Balls! He shouldn’t have told me that either, should he? Perhaps he was just being kind.

  For the first time in a couple of years I thought about my will. We were compelled to have one on the squadron, and the Tuesdays created ours so that everything accrued to the sur
vivors, until there was only one left. There’s a name for that sort of will, and I used to know it. I’d have to change that now. I heard a noise from beneath the blanket over Alice’s Restaurant: maybe a snore. Do snakes dream? I wondered.

  Piers. I was surprised to have to admit to myself that I was actually pleased to hear him. He was obviously an evil bastard, but he interested me.

  I said, ‘Wotcha, Piers.’

  ‘Don’t do cockney, Charlie,’ he advised me. ‘I can do cockney, but you can’t. You haven’t got the voice for it.’

  ‘What do I have the voice for?’

  ‘Flight Lieutenant, if you stay with us: it’s in my gift. That or the civil service equivalent, with a pension and a carriage clock after forty years. If you really cock up the King will give you an award. Order of the bleeding enema or something like that.’

  I snorted. ‘Not a bloody chance.’

  ‘Nice pun. You still want out, then?’

  ‘Definitely. As soon as the RAF will let me go: when is that, by the way?’

  ‘In about six months.’

  ‘That’s what you told me about three weeks ago.’

  ‘I forgot to start the clock. I’ll do it as soon as I hang up.’

  ‘You’re fucking me about, aren’t you?’

  ‘If I am, it’s all for the good of the country. Are you still going to go to Oz when you bale out?’

  ‘I don’t know; I’m going off the idea, but I don’t know why.’

  ‘How about hanging around, and then transferring to a civvy airline as a radio operator? There are people around who fly to all sorts of interesting places. If you got as far as Oz with them and didn’t like it, you’d still have the opportunity to come back again on the next flight. I could put in a word for you.’ I didn’t reply; I was trying to get my brain into gear, so eventually he asked, ‘Charlie? You still there?’

  ‘Sorry, Piers. I was thinking. Do you know, I think that that would suit me very well; as long as it was to nowhere very dangerous. Are you serious? What did you want, anyway – apart from to offer me a job I’d be very pleased to get?’