Silent War Read online

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Three weeks ago.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Then I told her. ‘I’ve been called up, and they told my secretary three weeks before they told me . . . I have a rotten hangover because I was stupid enough to go drinking with my dad . . . and I’m so mad I’ve dreamed about nothing else on the way down in the train except bending you over the desk, and giving you the sort of thrashing my old schoolmaster gave me . . . smacking your backside until you yelled.’

  Her eyes widened slightly, and the grin she shot me was almost like old times. ‘You could still do that.’

  She’d yorked me with five words, hadn’t she? A middle-stumper . . . because her grin made me smile as well, and the storm was over. But I shook my head and confessed, ‘I don’t think my heart could stand it.’

  She was still laughing. ‘If you were ill they couldn’t call you up. You’d have to stay at home.’

  I gave her enough of a look for her to know I was semi-serious, then glanced away. Shyness between old lovers is really sad.

  ‘Go away and leave me with the maintenance lists. I’ll come out in an hour in a better temper, and you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Mm, thanks.’ But the truth was I was already thinking about something else.

  Watson had told me that I could expect at least three weeks before I got the brown envelope with OHMS on it. This is the new RAF he explained to me, and nothing happens very quickly. I tapped a pencil against my teeth – trying to remember an Air Force officer I once met who used to do that – and considered haring off around the country for a few months, never staying anywhere long enough for the call-up letter to catch up with me. What do you do with three weeks? Carry on like normal, and pretend it isn’t happening? Spend time with the kids? – I had two who stayed in a pub at Bosham with a couple of good friends – the best really. Go out and roll as many willing ladies on their backs as my wallet and constitution could stand? The truth was more prosaic: I was suddenly and overwhelmingly apprehensive in a way I had never been before. I wanted to dig a large hole, get down into it and never come out. Something odd had happened to the bold old Charlie I once knew and loved – he’d scarpered.

  My telephone rang and when I lifted it Elaine said, ‘It’s Frieda. Shall I tell her you’re out?’

  Frieda was the woman I’d proposed to . . . which wouldn’t have been a problem if she hadn’t taken me seriously. It had been great at first; she had the body of a Hindu temple goddess, and we’d been wonderfully handy in bed. Her guardian was my employer, Lord God Almighty Halton, who, although he hadn’t exactly smiled upon the impending union, hadn’t scowled upon it either. Now, to be honest, I almost couldn’t stand the sight of her – she was an arrogant, stuck-up, German ogress – and our relationship had declined to a weekly meet in a hotel up in Town, with supper and a desperate fuck. So you might even say that the romance had gone out of it. I didn’t know who to tell first; Frieda herself or Old Man Halton, and if I played it with my usual skill I’d probably end up losing my fiancée and my job at the same time. It was time to show some pluck for a change.

  ‘Yes, tell her I’m out,’ I replied.

  I waited until Elaine had left the outer office to go to where most women seem to go about seventy times a day, and then dialled the number of a girl in Town who I knew. Dolly worked as a driver for a department that dared not speak its own name in the War Office. We hadn’t spoken for a year. She sounded pleased to hear me, but you never know, do you?

  After the usual ping-pong she asked me, ‘Did you get married?’

  ‘No. I would have invited you.’

  ‘Are you still engaged?’

  ‘Yes . . . but I’m in the process of becoming unengaged. What about you?’

  Pause. That old Glenn Miller eight-beat intro . . .

  ‘I’m getting married next week, Charlie.’ She said it flatly, like someone trumping you in a game of whist. Then she put the phone down.

  I looked out of the window for a minute before I opened my desk diary, with the company’s name on the cover, and wrote an entry which read, This is the week I didn’t have much luck. Then I put my passport into a pocket in my old flying jacket, pulled it on, and climbed inside the first of our aircraft leaving the damned place. Even Elaine looked worried.

  Bozey Borland drove out to meet me in the jeep he’d won in a crap game. You might have said that he was one of our overseas station officers. In fact he was our only one, and he stayed in Berlin because he would have been arrested by Customs if he set foot back in the UK. So far they’d shown little appetite for following him to Germany.

  I had flown there in the company’s scarlet-painted Avro York, as a passenger with a pilot I hardly knew. It was a jittery flight, and he flew in a jittery way: that was because I was unable to convince him that I wasn’t on board to check him out. I felt bilious as I came down the short step from the door under her great red wing.

  Bozey enquired, ‘Are you supposed to be here, boss? Has the War Office lifted your banning notice?’

  ‘I don’t fucking care, Bozey. I wanted to see Germany again for some unaccountable reason . . . the bastards have called me up, and I may not get another chance. I just wanted another look at the last country that was really worth bombing.’

  ‘You’re not having a good day, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  He drove me out through the military entrance to avoid the civilian authorities. His three-legged dog Spartacus was in the rear footwell. Because Spartacus lacked a back leg, when he wagged his tail his whole rear end wagged with it, like a clipper ship rounding Cape Horn in a blow. When he got excited he pissed at the same time. It could get messy.

  ‘He’s pissing in your car,’ I told Bozey.

  ‘I expect he’s pleased to see you. It’s a good job jeeps have no carpets.’

  ‘It stinks.’

  ‘He probably thinks that about us, boss. I think I should take you somewhere for a few drinks before I give you the news.’

  The flight had been so bad that I had forgotten my hangover.

  ‘I knew I was right to take you on, Bozey.’ But I also wondered what his news was.

  He took me to the Leihhaus – that’s a Jerry word that means pawnshop. But it wasn’t a pawnshop; it was a nightclub that stayed open most of the day as well. It was called the Leihhaus because in the early days after the war there wasn’t anything you couldn’t buy or sell there. I remembered it well.

  ‘I’m surprised it’s still here,’ I told him. ‘Is this still the neutral zone?’

  The neutral zone had been a triangular scrape of land where the American, British and Russian zones of postwar Berlin all kissed . . . only whoever had drawn the maps had made sure that they didn’t quite join up, so there was a couple of acres that fell under nobody’s jurisdiction. An American and a Russian I’d known had opened a nightclub on it. If you want to know more about that you’ll have to read another book.

  ‘No, they redrew the lines after we all made up. It’s ours now.’ Ours.

  ‘So you don’t get the Russians in here any more?’

  ‘No, we get a load of French instead . . . though on the whole I preferred the Reds. The Yanks still come, but their service cops are a problem they never used to be.’

  I smiled. In my day nothing seemed to be a problem at the Leihhaus.

  ‘I’m sure the club copes with that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bozey said. ‘We does.’ Never mind the tense; the second possessive was interesting, wasn’t it?

  We sat at what I could almost call my old table: a round scarred affair around which you could get six chairs at a squeeze. It was the only furniture I recognized. A newish hard-wearing brown carpet could only have come from the PX, and the other chairs and tables were lightweight chrome and steel things. It was late afternoon and the decent drinkers hadn’t begun to show yet. There was a small new dance floor with a parquet surface, and a bandstand f
or a sextet. In a corner a Negro pianist in a royal blue jacket played a blues tune, and crooned to himself.

  I went over to him. I put the couple of dollars I’d hit Bozey for on the piano top, and asked, ‘You know “Blues for Jimmy Noone”? It means something for me.’

  ‘Sho boy; but you ken take them back.’ He moved effortlessly into the opening bars of ‘Blues for Jimmy’, but nodded at the banknotes. ‘You already pay me well enough, boss.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Sho do, boss.’ He was milking the Uncle Tom for all it was worth. He was taking the mickey out of me, but I’d never be able to pin it on him. I took the money back to Bozey and sat down.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?’

  That old pause exactly as long as the ‘String of pearls’ intro again . . . I still love it. Bozey held his hand out over the table for a shake. I took it not knowing quite what was going on.

  He said, ‘Congratulations. You have a third share in the Leihhaus. I used that money you left behind. We had to do something with it after Tommo and the Red screwed up.’ Screwed up as in died.

  There was something missing. ‘Who owns the rest?’

  ‘I have a third as well.’

  There was still something missing. ‘Who has the rest?’

  It was the first time I had ever seen him thrown slightly off line. He looked away, and then back at me. ‘Halton Air. I did a deal with the American military for cheap fuel, and used the difference in here. I needed some extra cash to restyle the place, and to get the girls in.’

  At that precise moment I didn’t want to know about the girls. I asked him, ‘Does the Old Man know about this?’

  This time it was a pause you could have run a hundred yards in.

  ‘No, boss. I thought maybe you could be the one to tell him.’

  Bollocks.

  Chapter Two

  Lady be good

  He took me upstairs and showed me one of the rooms. It was fine. It looked like an expensive hotel room from the 1930s. The furniture was light wood but had those wonderful bold curves that still look modern sixty years later. It even had its own bathroom attached, with an Edwardian hip bath and a shower. The bed cover was turned back and the sheets were clean. There were even clean towels.

  I asked him, ‘How much do we get a night for this?’

  ‘We don’t, boss: it’s not a hotel. This is your room for whenever you’re visiting. It won’t be used when you’re not here.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I have a flat around the corner, with Irma.’

  ‘Did you win her in a game as well?’

  He had that slightly uncomfortable look again.

  ‘No. She came round looking for someone, and we took a shine to each other. She says she knows you.’ I ran Irma through the memory bank, and came out not guilty. I was still shaking my head as I opened the door on another room. It was also furnished with loot, the same as mine. It looked a bit more lived-in though, with a skirt and stockings draped over the back of a small dressing-table chair. It was also furnished with a woman in the bed.

  She peeked over the sheets – just her head mind you – as I looked in, yawned, smiled and said, ‘Hello, Joe. What time is it?’ She had tousled dark hair. I could smell last night’s perfume.

  ‘Nearly half past five after noon, and I’m not Joe, I’m Charlie.’

  That seemed to register. She said, ‘Oh, hello, boss,’ stuck out a long pale arm and waved. Then she disappeared back under the covers again. It was a nice arm, and she had a nice smile, and I was happy we’d met, so it was all right with me. You know the song, don’t you? It came out just about then. I hope I smiled back. I said, ‘Wrong room. Sorry,’ and closed the door gently. Outside I asked Bozey the poser, ‘She called me boss.’

  ‘Yes, boss. She’s one of our workers here. I thought I mentioned the girls – there are four of them.’

  ‘Yes. And I thought that if I didn’t pay any attention to it, then maybe it would go away.’

  ‘That’s Reimey. She’s French – from Paris. She’s a nice kid.’

  ‘Is this a brothel now, Bozey?’

  He looked uncomfortable again. That was interesting. ‘Only partly,’ he said.

  ‘Is it legal?’

  ‘Only partly.’

  ‘And you want me to explain to the Old Man that he now has a third share in a Berlin cat-house, and a nightclub. Christ, Bozey, what have you got us into?’

  ‘A lot of dosh, actually. I can afford to buy you out soon if you’re unhappy about it.’

  It was one of those moments. I leaned my arm on the wall of the corridor, bent and rested my head against it, and began to laugh. And laugh.

  Later I met Marthe again. I had slept in her place before the Berlin Airlift. The hug she gave me might have been more encouraging if her husband wasn’t pumping my hand up and down at the same time. There was a girl of ten or so dressed in school clothes standing shyly behind them. I pulled her forward.

  ‘Lottie?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Charlie . . .’ I hugged her too.

  ‘You’ve grown so; shot up. It’s so good to see you all.’

  Then I turned to her parents and asked them, ‘But what are you doing here?’

  ‘Marthe runs the kitchen,’ Bozey explained, ‘. . . and Otto runs the floor.’

  ‘Who runs upstairs?’

  ‘I do.’ At least he hadn’t ducked the issue. ‘Lottie comes round after school. Sometimes she helps the girls clean upstairs.’

  ‘Not any more. This isn’t a place for her. Find her a chair and table somewhere out of the way: she can do her homework in a corner, but that’s it.’ Nobody liked my change of tone. Lottie looked suddenly hurt; they probably needed the money. ‘Do you want to be my Berlin secretary, Lottie? You can keep a diary that tells everyone where I am . . .’ Then I put on a thoughtful face, and added, ‘But of course we’d have to put you on the pay roll then. Would that be OK?’ She nodded, so I told her, ‘Ask your dad first; get his permission.’ Later, if I had the chance, I’d tell the others what I thought about them letting a child that age work upstairs in a cat-house.

  I needn’t have bothered with the thought. Marthe gave me a kiss and said, ‘You’re a hypocrite, Charlie Bassett.’ Heuchler was the word she actually used: at least my German was coming back.

  ‘How? Why?’

  ‘Because you would use a place like this yourself without a backward glance, but you don’t like my little Lottie in here . . .’

  It was interesting that she’d formed that opinion of me, because I had never overnighted with a proper whore in my life. Not that I want you to think I’m coming all wings and halo on you: the truth was all my girlfriends so far had been like car accidents that I’d walked away from.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it, but if I’m the boss around here, then little Lottie doesn’t go upstairs, capisce?’

  They’re all the bloody same, aren’t they? Marthe couldn’t resist the last word. ‘You’re in Germany, Charlie, not Italy. Stop showing off.’

  I couldn’t work out why Bozey and Otto were grinning. Then I realized what I’d said: I’d said I’m the boss around here, which is what they’d all been waiting to bloody well hear.

  I knew that I wasn’t going to hang around for long, and that I was unlikely to return for a year at least, so I did what you always do – I revisited old haunts to get them stuck in my head. I went to the Rattlesnake Bar first, the Klapperschlange. It had also been owned by my pal Tommo, a Yank who had died in an air crash in 1949. I hadn’t realized it when he was alive, but he had always been my best pal. I still deal with problems sixty years later by asking myself what Tommo would have done. If I had asked him about pulling my RAF blues back on, and going out to the Canal Zone for Queen and Country he would have said, ‘Bollocks to that’, and handed me a first-class air ticket to Rio.

  From the outside the bar hadn’t changed much: a small door at the end of a steep co
bbled alley, with a big pink neon rattlesnake above it, blinking in the drizzle. It always seemed to rain in that street. The big man on the door had probably been a stormtrooper in another life.

  He spotted me for an Anglo immediately and snarled, ‘Members only.’ Then he had second thoughts, and repeated himself in German, ‘Nur für Mitglieder.’

  I couldn’t be arsed to struggle with another language, so I kept it natural.

  ‘That’s me chum: Charlie Bassett – founder member. I even met the rattlesnake herself; I bet you didn’t.’

  ‘Bitte?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m feeling: very bitter. The buggers want to send me back to war, so I want a drink at my old bar.’ I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to mention the war. This was 1952: the war hadn’t happened, there were no such things as Nazis, and we hadn’t bombed the fuck out of them for trying.

  Fritz breathed in, and expanded to about twice the size. He towered above me like Hercules. But he looked confused, and spat, ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘I do,’ the woman said. ‘This is Mr Bassett, and he is a very bad man. You should never let him in.’ But she was smiling, and pushed past him to hug and kiss me. She must have come through the bead curtain behind the door to see what was happening. Things were looking up. So was I because she was nearly a foot taller than me. I remembered her long straight dark hair, and her perfect heart-shaped face. The last time I’d seen her she’d been Tommo’s girl, and I’d stayed with them in a little country hideaway which had been two railway carriages in a forest sitting on top of half a dozen Teller mines. You really don’t want to know what they were. But I couldn’t remember her name.

  I asked, ‘Can I come in from the rain now?’

  ‘Ja, sure. Let him in, Pauli.’ This last had been addressed to the man mountain who had been clenching and unclenching his fists. I think he’d been looking forward to thumping me. He moved slowly – just to make a point.

  Inside she told me, ‘He gets jealous. I think I’ll have to let him go.’ That was the first time I’d heard the particular phrase used about a job; maybe that’s what Old Man Halton was thinking about me. On the only occasion I’d met her before we hadn’t exchanged five words. I thought then that either she was thick, or couldn’t speak God’s language. Now I realized that her English was flawless; probably better than mine.