The Forgotten War Page 18

  My wits were remarkably slow at reasserting themselves. Where was chirpy Charlie all of a sudden? Bella looked back over her shoulder and said, ‘Thanks for calling me, Alison. Charlie will be all right now.’ And to me: ‘Won’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Did I frighten you?’

  Both said no. Alison was lying. Her mother told her, ‘You can go back to bed now, love. He’s fine.’

  After her daughter had left Bella sat on the end of the bed. I remember a woman in Manchester doing the same: aeons ago. Bella looked younger with her hair down, and pretty: you could see where Alison got it from. They looked more like sisters. I asked her, ‘What time is it?’ I was bathed in sweat, and shivering.

  ‘Quarter past three. Can I get you a drink, or a cup of cocoa or something?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m fine now, I promise you.’

  She smiled and shook her head. Nice one, Charlie. Getting it right for once.

  I didn’t tell her that I had been dreaming about a woman on fire. In my dream the woman’s hair was burning, and she was beating the flames ineffectively with her hands, and screaming. You never want to hear screams like that. I’d seen her die years ago, and never knew her name. I lay awake for an hour before I slept.

  The following day I walked a couple of miles across the fields, using a crude map that Alison had drawn for me, until I found a pub called the Lord Halifax. I drank too much cider, and slept it off lying under a tree in a meadow. I was awoken three hours later because my face was being rasped. Well, not rasped, exactly – say being rhythmically slapped, with an unusual amount of vigour, by about a hundredweight of tongue . . . which is what happens when you’re being licked by a cow. This one had large dark brown eyes, and was probably a pretty cow, as cows go, but I was never going to fall for her.

  When I returned to the farm the chickens had roosted, and Bella and Ming had gone off to his mother’s house for the night, taking Alison with them. I wondered who had been lined up for the chickens in the morning. Maybe I was supposed to do it. One day I’d get round to telling them that I wasn’t too keen on chickens – until they were in the oven, that was.

  I didn’t bother to make up the fire, just pulled on another layer of clothing, and sat and listened to the BBC Light Programme. After the usual variety show there was a dramatization of Mr Standfast, with Jack Warner and Valentine Dyall. I listened to them in the twilight, and smoked my pipe. I’d always liked Buchan when I had been at school. I had food and booze to hand, company in the pub if I wanted it, nobody was shooting at me, and I could do what I liked with my time. So why was I vaguely discontented with my lot when I went to my bed in the empty house?

  Some rustic type I hadn’t seen before let the birds out at dawn and collected the eggs. The chickens didn’t like being roused by a stranger, made as much noise as George Frederick Handel on rum and fruit juice, and woke me up. I took the fellow a mug of char. He thanked me, but the look that came with it told me that he’d have preferred cider. He had string tied around his trouser legs under his knees. That was to prevent the chickens running up inside his trousers, I guessed.

  Bella was very proud of the new telephone she had in the hall: I thought that the money would have been better spent getting electricity into her kitchen. Anyway, when the phone rang I ignored it. It would never be for me. Then it rang again, and curiosity killed the cat: I couldn’t help myself. A local operator asked me if I was the number that I could see on the disc of paper on the telephone cradle. I was. I read it back to her.

  ‘Please wait. I have a call from London for you.’

  Piers came on the line as clear as if he had been in the next room. Perhaps he was. He said, ‘Charlie! Where have you been?’

  ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh: there! Everything go off OK?’ He wasn’t really interested; he was just asking for the sake of it.

  ‘It was rather sad, actually. I might tell you the next time I see you, if I get stocious enough.’

  ‘Stocious. I like that. Very RAF. I was hoping that I’d see you sooner rather than later. In fact, I was wondering why you hadn’t called.’

  ‘What about?’

  He paused before he replied. ‘About a photograph I injudiciously left in your car. You did find it?’

  ‘No. What photograph?’

  Piers paused again. ‘You’re angry with me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘I’ll need the photo back: everything in these files is numbered.’

  ‘Put in a note saying that I destroyed it.’

  ‘The B107 in your records is spot on, Charlie, do you know that? It says that you’re an awkward little sod.’

  ‘There you are, then. No use to you.’

  I think that for a change I was one set up. Piers said, ‘Unfortunately for me you’re all I’ve got. Won’t you change your mind about doing one or two little jobs for us? I’d see that it was worth your while.’

  ‘I don’t need money, Piers. I came into some during the war.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  ‘Money’s not everything, Charlie. You’ve got no idea what we could do for you.’

  Or to you, I thought. Piers continued, ‘What about it?’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  ‘The girls are missing you.’

  ‘Tell them that I’m missing them: a cow kissed me yesterday, and I thought of them immediately.’

  Piers laughed his hacking laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘You’ll think about it, then . . . and phone me in the week?’

  ‘If you like. Now bugger off.’

  He said, ‘OK,’ and broke the connection.

  I was left looking at the heavy handset: it growled at me. I thought about Alice. Had she shed her skin, and started moving around yet? As a pet, a snake has limited entertainment value. What I didn’t tell Piers was that I’d already made my mind up. I wanted to see Grace Baker again; I just hadn’t decided whether I was going to tell him about it.

  I saw Watson on Monday morning, and asked him if there was any way of predicting when we were going to be asked to fly the weather flights. My excuse for asking was that knowing this would make my office work easier to plan.

  ‘No. Sorry. Not unless you can get them to talk to you themselves. I get the same notice as you. I wouldn’t get that if I wasn’t first reserve if you go u/s or something. If you can’t fly, I have to.’

  ‘I didn’t realize that, sir. Can you handle the radios, then?’

  ‘Cheek of the fellow! I used to; years ago. How do you think I landed this job in the first place? It’s all about minding a load of radios, women, locks and keys, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly it . . .’

  ‘. . . Sir.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘I hear that you’re keeping a ruddy great snake in your office. The cleaners have complained, and they refuse to go in there.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I’m only minding it for a friend. It won’t be there for long.’

  ‘Good-oh. Fancy a snifter? Sun’s over the yard arm.’

  Watson had only one cupboard in his office. This was the first time I had seen it open. It was full of bottles. I’d had three proper Squadron Leaders in the RAF so far. The first went mad, the second was the one who had declared me dead, in order to tidy up my file – and the third was beginning to look like a drunk. I certainly could pick ’em.

  Tommo Thomsett paid me the honour of a telephone call. He shouted, ‘Hiya, Charlie. How’s it goin’?’

  ‘It’s going well, Tommo, except that I’m sharing my office with Alice, and I don’t want to be in the RAF any more. Why are you shouting?’

  ‘To make myself heard over the wind. Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘No, all I can hear is you. Are you still in Greenland?’

  ‘No. Iceland; speaking over the new link. You ever seen the broads up here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Man! Blonde bombers, every one of ’em. They all look
like film stars, and they’ll turn a trick for a hot dog.’

  ‘What’s that mean – turn a trick?’

  ‘Come on, Charlie. Use yer imagination.’

  ‘Don’t you mean for the price of a hot dog?’

  ‘No, Charlie. I mean for the real thing. You never seen girls eat like these ones.’

  ‘Don’t they eat whale meat for breakfast, and rub blubber all over themselves in the winter?’

  ‘Not any more, bud: that’s Eskimos. These people discovered the mighty dollar. The hot dog is their new national dish.’

  It was time to get some business done.

  ‘How long am I babysitting Alice?’ I asked. ‘She’s losing her skin, and shaking her rattle at me. We’re falling out of love.’

  ‘Friday OK? We could have a few beers in the evening. I booked into that pub in Great Rissington. You could bring Alice. I kinda miss her.’

  ‘What are you going to do with her eventually?’

  ‘I keep trying to palm her off on a zoo, but I can’t find anyone willing to take her. One of the German places said yes because they’d lost all their stock, but she bit a dog so I had to go and get her back again. They wanted their money back, but I told them to jack it.’

  Tommo had inherited Alice from the first American whom she’d bit: he’d promised the dying man that he’d look out for her. Tommo could be a bit of a snake himself, and I’d heard that he wasn’t averse to threatening reluctant payers with a visit from Alice. She was a pretty good enforcer. I didn’t think that he’d get rid of her: he’d trailed her all around Europe so far. Selling a party an uncontrollable deadly snake and then offering to take it back off their hands for nothing sounded just like one of his scams.

  ‘Look, Tommo. There’s something you can do for me. Remember the day we first met? I gave you some bottles from Pete’s stash – stuff you didn’t have – and you gave me something in return?’

  ‘Yeah; it was a cigar, weren’t it? You want some cigars?’ He was being coy. He’d also swapped me a pistol as well: a nasty great Colt automatic.

  ‘No. The other thing. You know.’

  ‘Why don’t you come out with it, Charlie? You mean the gun.’

  ‘I thought that someone could be listening.’

  ‘I don’t give a toss who hears me. I’m outside your jurisdiction. You want another gun?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘What happened to the first one I gave you?’

  ‘Pete got it. How is Pete?’

  ‘I’ll tell ya when I see you.’ That was interesting. There were obviously some things he didn’t want to say over a telephone line. ‘What happened to that dinky Kraut piece you had in Germany?’

  ‘They took it away from me when I came back. Can you get me something discreet that won’t look like a spare tit if I put it in my coat?’

  He laughed. ‘I like that, Charlie. I’ll remember it.’ Then there was a load of static, and the line went dead. Usually I’m quite good at static, but this wasn’t one of my days. He hadn’t said yes, either.

  Miller had come in while I was talking. She asked, ‘Who was that?’ and when I stared at her, ‘Who were you talking to?’

  She was leaning against the office door jamb. I was getting better at girls leaning against door frames. I hadn’t actually heard her arrive, and didn’t know how long she’d been there or what she’d overheard. She was wearing a dress of dirty blue, and looked that way herself, in the best sense of the word. It touched in all the right places – just reached her knees, but left her arms bare. Maybe summer was a-coming in.

  ‘The man who owns Alice. He’s coming to get her back on Friday if I’m not out.’

  ‘I’d like to meet him. He sounds interesting.’

  ‘You can if you want to; we’re going to have a few drinks at the Lamb.’

  Pause. Six-beat, like Glenn’s intro to ‘In the Mood’. Maybe she was in the mood when she said, ‘I’ll think about it. Maybe.’ She smiled. I smiled back at her. She wasn’t carrying one of those damned brown envelopes in to me. God was in his heaven.

  In the middle of the day we drove down to that place by the river. It was the only place I knew. We collected glasses of cider, and sat with our feet in the chill water: they quickly went white. I didn’t say anything smart or funny: neither did she.

  Miller talked about her schooldays and her friends. Then she told me about her family, and her father, whom she clearly adored. I told her about my family, and my friends on the squadron and how I missed them. I told her that having regular time off duty was difficult to get used to: that I didn’t know what to do with my time when I wasn’t working. On the squadron it had been so easy; there were always blokes to go on the skite with.

  She didn’t mention her husband once. I didn’t tell her anything about women I’d been close to. We found that we couldn’t stop talking, and were late back. She had a high colour when she left me; I was probably grinning like a gorilla. Alice stirred herself for a muted congratulatory rattle. Oh, Charlie.

  Piers asked, ‘Anything happening between you and Mrs Miller yet?’

  ‘Like what, Piers? I thought that you didn’t know her.’

  ‘Of course we do, dear boy: we’ve a book running on you up here. The irresistible force meets the immovable object. One of you is really going to mess the other up, and we’ve placed bets on it. I’m not sure, so I’ve laid a couple off as well. Think of yourselves as amatory gladiators, entertaining the masses.’

  ‘That’s sick. Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Dolly’s, I think: her money is on Mrs Miller. Den’s bet on you. But you didn’t reply to my original question, did you?’

  ‘And I’m not going to . . . that’s not really why you called, anyway.’

  ‘Clever boy. No. I wondered if you had forgotten to call me about that other matter.’ Why was he pushing it all the time? Something must be in the air.

  ‘No, I hadn’t forgotten, I just haven’t called. I’m still thinking about it, but if it helps . . . if you don’t nag me, you might well get your own way.’

  ‘Ah.’ In the pause after that I ran the opening phrase to Major Glenn Miller’s ‘String of Pearls’ inside my head – that five-and-a-half-beat. Then Piers added, ‘You won’t leave it too long, will you?’

  ‘No, Piers: you’ll be the first to know. Am I flying this week, by the way?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know, old chap. Sorry.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Either you commission the flights in the first place, or you act as liaison between your department and the RAF when they tell you that they’re going to fly. I haven’t worked out which yet. Either way, you’re in the know. Wasn’t I supposed to work that out on my own?’

  ‘Ah . . . no: not really.’

  ‘Tough. Well, what about it?’

  ‘What if I said that I think you can assume a pretty uneventful fortnight?’

  ‘Thank you, Piers. Let’s say that I call you every week, and put the same question to you?’

  ‘Pretty irregular, old boy. Insecure.’

  ‘But then you’d always know what I was up to, wouldn’t you? You’d know if I was available to help you out with any other wee jobbie.’

  ‘Wee jobbie – I like that.’

  ‘I turn a good phrase, don’t I? Can we leave it at that?’

  ‘Anything you say, old boy.’

  I already knew Piers well enough to feel unhappy when he agreed with me. Miller was at the door. She and the door frame she leaned on must have been designed around each other. I wanted her clothes off. She knew it, and blushed; that was a first. She asked, ‘Who were you speaking to?’

  ‘Don’t they call themselves GCHQ now? Our brothers in London; soon to be our brothers and sisters out here.’ It was the first time I had used the letters.

  ‘What did they tell you?’

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting an easy fortnight. Might take a few days’ leave next week.’

  ‘Go up to London?’
>
  ‘Probably; want to come?’

  She gave me the eye. It wasn’t a friendly eye. Then she turned on her heel and walked away. Her hips swung like the stern of one of those stately Spanish galleons the man wrote about. Swinging through the Isthmus, wasn’t it?

  Tommo said, ‘Look, Charlie, sooner or later you’re gonna have to get this right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Broads,’ Tommo explained. ‘Start getting it right.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because the rule is that the broad you sleep with always wants to run your life. If she happens also to be the one you work with, she’ll want to run that as well. That’s why you don’t do it. You gotta keep part of your life fer yerself.’

  ‘I haven’t slept with her yet; in fact, I don’t think that’s going to happen. She keeps her knees together, and loves her husband.’

  ‘She sounds like one of the dangerous ones. When they go off, they’re like the atom bomb. Believe me.’

  I spent a few pleasant seconds imagining Miller going off like an atom bomb. I probably had a silly look on my face.

  ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’ I asked him.

  ‘I like you, Charlie. I want you to profit by my mistakes.’

  I was making my own already, because I’d told him about Miller.

  Tommo was at the Lamb before me. He had a battered Bedford one-and-a-half-tonner in the courtyard. The driver’s-side screen was missing, and the canvas tilt was torn and patched. Its unit insignia had been crudely painted over, but you could still see the faded Allied star on its doors. He shrugged when I asked about it. ‘Got it at an auction. Ten English pounds. In fact I bought a dozen of them.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’ll put ’em up on bricks for a few years, and then sell them back to you when you get into your next war and get short of trucks. Say a hun’ed an’ fifty each. Your government is selling off enough kit to equip a decent army.’

  ‘That’s because it’s short of ready money.’

  ‘I don’t see how. What do they do with it all? Your friggin’ taxes over here are as high as the friggin’ Rockies.’