A Blind Man's War Read online

  I paused for a few seconds before I answered: ran a few bars of music in my head – an aria from Norma.

  ‘Yes. I was there for four or five months; but you must have checked up on that already.’ She in RAF Intelligence was not Ayesha. She was Dolly. The first time I had met her she had been Section Officer Dolly Wayne, a War Office driver. That’s what I thought anyway. We’d knocked around with one another every now and again – in personal relationships she was as rootless as me. She’d even missed her own wedding because she was too hung-over to get to the altar: that takes a lot of beating.

  ‘Of course we’ve checked; I just didn’t want you thinking we’d pulled your name out of a hat.’

  ‘I don’t want your damned job – I’m finished with that sort of bullshit.’ But then my nose got the better of me; I think they rely on that. I asked, ‘Tell me how long it would have been for, anyway.’

  ‘Four or five months I expect. Then your airline will be back in business.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Can’t tell you. Walls still have ears.’

  ‘You’re mad; the whole damned lot of you. Anyway, if I had agreed what would have been in it for me?’

  ‘Civil Service pay at an undeservedly elevated level, and we’ll look after those boys of yours if anything goes wrong this time.’

  These drip-dry-shirted bastards have had me over all my life. Halfway through a conversation you think you have under control, you feel the fish hook go through your lip, and they’ve got you. I decided I wasn’t in the mood for opera, and looked at him with Bob Scobey’s Frisco Jazz Band playing between my ears, SOS, SOS, Captain we are lost . . .

  ‘What do you mean by look after?’

  ‘Westminster, we thought – a nice sort of lad goes to Westminster these days – then Cambridge.’

  ‘Public school and university?’ I couldn’t see Dieter agreeing to that.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m a paid-up Socialist.’

  ‘Yes, old chap, but are they?’ He had me there.

  ‘I’ve never asked them.’ The implication was there, of course, so I asked him, ‘What sort of thing could go wrong?’

  ‘You could get hurt.’ They never say, You might get killed: looking death in the face is terribly bad form in the place where his accent came from. ‘I’ve already told you that you would be based in Cyprus for some of the time.’

  ‘Cyprus was very peaceful the last time I passed through – beach parties, tombola, seafood and women with large black moustaches.’

  He looked at me very levelly and said, ‘Cyprus is not going to be very peaceful for much longer, Mr Bassett – in fact, British soldiers are already getting killed there. Practically a rebellion.’

  ‘That sounds almost like Egypt in 1953. You can’t deal with a few hotheads without my help again: is that it?’

  He didn’t do irony, so he smiled that smile again.

  ‘If you put it like that.’

  ‘If the locals don’t want us there why don’t we just leave?’

  ‘Because we can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If we left, we’d lose the Med. We could not control it.’

  ‘It was never ours to control in the first place.’

  He smiled again, and there might have been something genuine in there.

  ‘Try explaining that to the Prime Minister, Mr Bassett . . . or his Cabinet or the heads of departments. Your argument has merit with me, but not with them. Apparently Britannia still rules the waves.’

  ‘What will happen if I say no? You can’t call me up again, can you? I’m no longer a reservist.’

  He spread his hand on the buff-coloured file again, and said, ‘No; I can’t insist . . . but what I can do is cancel your passport, I’m afraid. Ground you.’

  ‘And would you?’

  ‘Definitely.’ Then he smiled the smile I didn’t like again. ‘Why don’t you toddle off and see Halton, and then come back here to see me tomorrow with your decision. I’m sure we can work something out.’

  His name was Browne. It had said that in my letter. C. H. Browne. Charlie, like me? Then Harry? Henry?

  ‘What does the C. H. stand for, Mr Browne . . . as in C. H. Browne?’

  His face was back in my file again; an amused smile played around his lips. He answered almost absently.

  ‘Carlton Browne.’

  ‘And the H?’

  He suddenly looked up at me. His eyes were as hard as playground marbles.

  ‘Hannibal. Good at getting elephants over Alps.’ And a camel through the eye of a needle perhaps. Bollocks.

  My boss, Old Man Halton, owned Halton Air. I minded it for him. He had been gassed at Loos in the Great War, and consequently could cough for England; apart from that he’d weathered well.

  Whenever I liked him I called him ‘guv’nor’ to his face. He enjoyed that: it made him feel like one of the boys. If I was out of love with him I called him sir. Whenever you went into his office he rose, offered you his hand, and asked you to sit down; even if you were about to get a bollocking. This time I didn’t give him a bloody chance. After he stopped coughing I demanded, ‘Are you sacking me, sir?’

  ‘Nice to see you, Charlie. Sit down . . .’

  I ignored his outstretched hand, ‘I said—’

  ‘I heard what you said. Now bloody well sit down.’

  I moved the chair around with several bangs before dropping into it.

  Halton asked, ‘There. Feeling better?’ I was probably glaring at him. The older I get the better I get at glaring. He said, ‘No. I’m not sacking you, and I’m not pressuring you to go off gallivanting with your peculiar pals in the War Office either. Someone just mentioned a little job they said they needed done, and I just happened to mention that you’d done something of the sort before, and might be free for a few months, that’s all. I know you don’t need the money, but things have been tame around here for a while, and I thought you might appreciate a change – suntanned girls, and warm beaches, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What kind of a someone were you talking to?’

  ‘The Air Minister kind of a someone – at a banquet at the Mansion House. He actually knew of you, I think, and seemed quite keen on the idea.’

  I asked, ‘Why are we moving from Lympne?’ Our base in Kent.

  ‘Because we have to. The owners have pulled the rug. They’ve had a better offer from Skyways, and we have to get out. A friend at the ministry pulled a few strings for me, and got us sole use of Panshanger out near Welwyn Garden City – pretty country.’

  ‘So we’re still flying?’

  ‘Of course we are. We’ll run a limited operation from our Berlin office with, say, two aircraft for a few months, whilst the rest of the fleet is being converted.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Troop carriers, Charlie, that’s what I asked you down here to discuss. We have the new contract for troop ferrying out to the Med and the Middle East.’

  I was still sulking. ‘I thought Eagle Airways had that all sewn up?’

  ‘They do, but someone, somewhere, has budgeted for a massive increase in the War Office’s capacity to move soldiers around, and Eagle can’t expand to meet it. I can.’ Then he began coughing again. He always got me when he began coughing: he should have been dead years before. I poured him a glass of water from a carafe on a small side table, and took it round to him.

  ‘So you want me to go back to Berlin, and run the operation from there for a time?’ He was wiping his mouth with one of his monster white handkerchiefs – they became speckled with blood on his bad days.

  ‘That’s the point, Charlie. You can’t, can you? The German authorities have placed you on their blacklist. That’s why you’ll have very little to do until just before the conversions are completed.’

  Shafted, I thought; completely fucking shafted.

  One of the things I failed to mention was that I’d passed June, the red-haired girl my two boys had taken a s
hine to, as I walked into Halton’s office. The office was over at the Cargo Side at London’s crass new airport at Heathrow. I was as relaxed with her as you can be with a girl with whom you’ve slept, and with whom you wished you still were. We were shy. I hated that. After getting a brief from the old man on what the next few months held for the air arm of our business, and collecting enough papers to fill a dustbin, I shot the breeze with her in the outer office. By which I mean that I had said hello, and she had totally ignored me.

  I’m an in for a penny merchant; I can be really subtle if need be.

  I told her, ‘I still want to sleep with you, and I want you to smile when I walk in here; instead of that you turn your head away.’

  ‘I know.’ She still didn’t look at me.

  ‘I think of you a lot.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The boys ask about you all the time. They think it was my fault.’

  She could have said, It was. Instead she said, ‘I know.’

  Len Hutton used to bat like that on his quiet days. Stone-waller.

  I hadn’t noticed that Halton had followed me from his office, and stood in the door earwigging.

  He laughed, and said, ‘She knows, you know!’ His laughter turned to coughing again, and he lurched back to his room fumbling for his handkerchief.

  I went to the outer door, but stopped there and turned to look at her again. In for a pound this time, Charlie.

  ‘It’s half past three, June. You finish in a couple of hours. When you do I’ll be waiting outside in the car. I’ll take you out to dinner – anywhere you like. Then I’m going to take you back to your digs, and lay you on your back.’

  My chin probably lifted as defiant as a schoolboy’s when I said that, and swung away. I expected a mouthful from her, because June had a temper if you pushed her too far. I took three steps away from the door, and then stopped and turned: what she said instead was, ‘I know.’

  She must have freshened up her lipstick before she left work, because as soon as she got into the car she kissed me, and left it all over my face. We drove straight to her place and made love. Afterwards she lay back in bed, sighed, and said, ‘Thank God for that!’

  ‘Thank God for what?’

  ‘Thank God you still wanted me. I didn’t know if you’d come back for me, or not.’

  ‘You didn’t give me any encouragement at all.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, would I?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She didn’t reply at once. I wondered if she had heard me. Then she said, ‘I’m twenty-five, Charlie. How old are you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t know much about women, do you? Apart from how our bodies work.’

  ‘Do I know enough about that?’

  ‘Almost, but you don’t know how we think, do you?’

  ‘You could always teach me.’

  She said, ‘Not a chance,’ and trained one of her breasts on me again. The nipple was still large. I think it spoke to me. It was telling me to shut up.

  We ate at a new Indian restaurant in Hounslow. Occasionally I put my hands under the table, and ran them over her legs. She always stopped speaking in mid-sentence when I did that. We finished with a green tea which was new to me.

  I asked her, ‘Are you still going to marry . . . ?’ I couldn’t even remember his bloody name.

  ‘Eric. Eric Tripp. Haven’t made my mind up yet.’ She had been engaged to a soldier in 1951, until the poor bugger had been captured by the Chinese in North Korea. She had thought him dead, and was still grieving when I came on the scene a couple of years later. Then he came back, which spoiled things for a while. His experiences in a POW camp had made him as mad as a monkey anyway, and after he tried to kill a domesticated Chinaman somewhere in London, he was stuck in an asylum. It still might have worked out between us, but, just as I was getting the green light again, the government had sent me to Egypt for six months. Enter Eric Tripp: he had stepped in before I got back, and she had ended up engaged to marry again.

  ‘Are you making me an offer?’

  ‘I can’t make up my mind either,’ I told her, ‘but I’m going to be based along at Panshanger from now on, so I could get up to see you more often.’

  ‘Ask me again when you have made your mind up. Then I’ll tell you.’

  ‘But you’ll still go out with him?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘And sleep with him?’

  ‘None of your business, boss. Are we going back to my place tonight?’

  Boss? I suppose that was technically right. The last thought I had before I slept, was that the boys would be pleased.

  When I awoke in the morning she was staring at me, lying on her stomach, her chin propped up in her hands. It was a nice stare. Uncomplicated. Maybe even fond. She said, ‘I’m going to say something rather bold.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I like you in my bed.’

  ‘So do I.’

  All the best relationships are based on having something fundamental to agree on.

  Chapter Two

  Hello, Pete

  C. H. Browne of the FO sipped his coffee and asked, ‘Well?’

  ‘There was something I wanted to ask you, something we glossed over yesterday.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Exactly what were the allegations these foreign countries have made about me? You said the file of letters you had was full of them.’

  He still had both files on his desk. We were in a smaller office this time. He had a smaller desk, and the smaller chairs were comfortable. Maybe he no longer needed to impress. He read from the letters one by one.

  ‘The Germans suspect you of racketeering, operating on the black market, and illegally owning bars, clubs and a brothel.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Communist Germany accuses you of illegal entry. Russia, according to a confidential source, has you meeting with persons since executed for treason. France complains of illegal entry and smuggling, and Egypt claims that you are co-owner of a nightclub in contravention of civil ordinances . . . and that you consorted with known terrorists. Turkey has reported you, again for illegal entry – have you a problem with passports and boundaries, Mr Bassett? – and for being involved in a murderous shoot-out in a singularly remote region. They also claim that you consort with terrorists – Kurdish Nationalists this time.’

  ‘Any more?’

  ‘The Shah of Persia would like us to extradite you to face charges of conspiring to bring down a legal government, and, as I indicated yesterday, the Americans aren’t all that keen on you either.’ He closed the file again. I thought the Commies’ rejection of me a bit rich: I’d joined the CP in London, by accident, in 1947 – and as far as I knew no one had unjoined me yet. Again, that’s another story.

  ‘Can I still go to Scotland?’

  ‘I think so, but I can’t think why anyone should want to . . .’

  CB’s intelligence dossier on me was obviously a bit dodgy.

  ‘My father lives there. Some people are funny that way.’ I sat back in my chair. I desperately wanted to smoke my pipe but couldn’t see an ashtray. So I asked, ‘Where can I go, then?’

  He stared at me and blinked slowly, just once. The old smile was back.

  ‘You can always go to Cyprus, but we’ll tell you when.’

  Bugger it.

  I’ve always had this problem. When someone tells me I can’t do something, I find I simply have to do it.

  So I drove down to Lympne and gave my secretary, Elaine, a nice dry peck on the cheek. It stopped there these days because her husband was around more often. Elaine was the first ex-lover I was still happy around. I liked to think that our comfortable and professional relationship was the result of us having put our wilder days behind us. I sometimes gave her a second glance, and she did me, but wasn’t sure whether that derived from appetites or memories. You know how it is.

  Then I explained what was happening to all the air crew
and groundies kicking around. Some of them would move airfields with us, and some would probably sign up with Skyways. I was still a bit pissed off when I hopped onto Randall’s old Airspeed Oxford. I didn’t even bother to take my passport: if the Gestapo picked me up in Berlin with it in my pocket they’d still fling me in the pokey anyway.

  Randall was a pilot who had been flying me places since 1945, and felt more like a brother. I couldn’t imagine my life without him being part of it. I’d got him a job with Halton in 1947: he was one of those big Americans who know how to do bad things well, and good things badly. Bloody fine pilot too, unfussy in his flying – I liked that.

  ‘I don’t like Germany any more,’ he told me. It was nice to be overflying the country without the Russians trying to knock us down, as they did during the Airlift.

  ‘Why not, Randall?’

  ‘They’ve mended it. It was better when it was busted.’

  I liked Randall. Liked him a lot. The old Airspeed was beginning to show her age, but Randall loved her. I wasn’t looking forward to the day when I would have to tell him that I was replacing her. He was also a mind-reader. He looked over at me, and grinned.

  ‘When you retire this old cow I’ll give you a Hershey bar for her.’

  Randall did a gentle wingover, and she began to rattle a bit. He started the let-down for Berlin. It would be OK if the cops weren’t around.

  Tempelhof used to be the US-run airport at the German end of the Berlin Airlift. Now it was a main aviation hub just like any you could find all over the world. But, being German, it was cleaner. It had its military side, but Randall avoided that as well, and taxied us round to the small group of freight sheds used for internal traffic. I kept my eyes skinned as we bumped around the peri-track, but didn’t spot any customs or police cars. Anyway, I was right about the Oxford: she seemed to bounce down to her wheel stops over every crack in the tarmac. It was time the poor old girl was put out to grass.

  Bozey Borland was waiting for us in our nice little black Mercedes saloon. He had replaced the little flag posts which had once flown Nazi flags on the top of each wing. Now they carried small French tricolours, and the car had new registration plates since I’d last sat in it. It had been our first acquisition after we opened the Berlin office. Bozey had won it in a card game; he was my local station manager. We did the Hello you, and Hello you back thing, squeezed Randall into the back, and set off for a small side gate used by the domestic companies.