Silent War Read online

The year hadn’t yet made its mind up about seasons, so I drove down in bright sunshine, with the roof of my old Singer roadster open, and bloody near froze to death. One day I’ll thank God for the man who designed the flying jacket I wore over my clothes. I dropped over the Downs and into Chichester in time to pick up Carly from his primary school at three, and we played hopscotch outside Dieter’s school gate until the elder showed himself, weighed down by a tattered RAF small pack full of homework and gym kit. Ice cream, Tizer and then home. We played with their Dinky army lorries on the floor in front of the fire, and then Ludo until it was time for them to go to bed. Boys can be easy to please sometimes.

  Later I helped James and Maggs to repel the Friday rush, from behind the bar. On Fridays all the yachties came down to pretend to be sailors. I’m showing my prejudice, of course; some of them were quite keen, and two of the old wooden ladies in the basin had been to Dunkirk and back a few times in 1940. When I walked back to the prefab, frosted gravel crackling beneath my shoes, the boys were no longer in their beds. They were on either side of the kitchen table with mugs of Ovaltine that Dieter had obviously made.

  I feigned horror, which made them laugh, and then asked, ‘What’s going on? Couldn’t you sleep?’

  ‘We were talking about you, Dad.’ Dieter said. He often spoke for the both of them.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We heard the Major tell Mrs Maggs that you were going to Egypt. There’s a war on there.’ We all called James the Major, unless we addressed him directly.

  ‘You shouldn’t listen in to other people’s conversations, but as it happens, you’re right. I do have to go to Egypt.’

  ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘No, but I’m being called up. I don’t have a choice.’

  ‘You can write Bollocks on the call-up letter, and send it back. Martin’s eldest brother did that.’ I knew Martin. Dieter and he fished together on the Arun. That made me smile.

  ‘That’s maybe not a bad idea, but they’ll send the police after him. Try not to swear, son; not ’til you’re older.’

  There was more to this round-the-table conference than met the eye. I got myself a whisky from the cupboard, and as I sat down Carlo suddenly burst out with, ‘We don’t want you to go. You’ll get killed.’

  I hugged him, and ruffled his hair. ‘No I won’t. I’ll be very careful . . . and they’re only sending reservists like me out for six months. That’s twenty-four weeks: it will pass in a flash.’ I didn’t actually know that: no one had told me.

  ‘Peter Harding’s dad was killed,’ Dieter explained. ‘He didn’t even get as far as the Middle East. The Gyppoes killed him in Cyprus.’

  ‘Don’t call them Gyppoes,’ I cautioned him. ‘They’re Egyptians. Peter Harding’s dad must have been unlucky. Is Peter in your class?’

  ‘No: 3b. They cut him up with cheese wire, and sent the pieces back in a parcel.’

  Why do boys always manage to recall the gorier details?

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I will be working with a radio in a fortified camp; somewhere very safe . . . and I’ll have time to write you letters, and maybe I’ll even be able to call you up on the Major’s telephone.’ Then I suddenly stopped talking because I realized that all over the country similar conversations were going on, and we couldn’t all be right, could we? Whenever Britannia flexes her muscles there is a blood tax to be paid.

  Carly was fishing about in the bottom of his drink with a spoon: they were almost done. But Dieter was never one to let you away safe once he’d pinned you to a chair. He asked, ‘You’re not going to marry Miss Frieda are you, Dad?’

  ‘No, I’m not. We thought we would, for a time, but now we realize we argue too much. Does that upset you?’

  ‘No. We didn’t like her very much. She used to scold Carly.’

  ‘We call her the scary girlfriend,’ Carly chipped in.

  ‘Then I won’t marry her. I’ll only marry someone you like.’

  ‘Have you got a girlfriend at all at the moment, Dad?’ That was Dieter again. He was always trying to marry me off.

  ‘I had one last week. I could call her up and ask.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Her name is June. She has bright red hair, and very white skin . . . and a big smile. She laughs very loud when she’s happy, but I think she probably has a bit of a temper as well.’

  ‘Like Mrs Maggs?’

  ‘A bit. Why?’

  ‘Maybe you could bring her down here to meet us.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I promised them. Then I packed them off to bed again, hoping that it would stick this time.

  Saying goodbye to Maggs, James and the kids was harder than it ever had been before.

  Chapter Three

  Doctor Jazz

  I didn’t like the way that Elaine looked at me. It was as if she was watching all the time; sizing me up for something, although I’d only been back in the office ten minutes.

  ‘There were only two personal calls when you were away, and I decided to bother you with neither of them.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘One was from a Wing Commander Watson. He left a telephone number, asked if you had received any letters yet, and said he had notice of your overseas medical. He asked you to call him.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him he should be ashamed of himself, and put the phone down.’

  That made me snort.

  ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘A woman named June wanted to speak to you. She left a telephone number, as well.’

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘The same. I thought she sounded much too young for you, so I told her she should be ashamed of herself, and put the telephone down on her too.’

  ‘I’ve only been away three days and you’ve already destroyed my next military career, and ruined my love life.’

  ‘I know. I did rather well, didn’t I? Now neither of them will want you.’

  It was a nice try, but I smiled, probably a little sadly. ‘Life doesn’t work out like that, does it?’

  Then I noticed that she was wearing her white shirt with more buttons popped open than usual, and that the view out over the foothills was still very interesting. She noticed me noticing, and didn’t seem to mind. That was interesting too; maybe Terry had been away from home too long again. Oddly enough I felt a little shy once more. I hoped that was nothing to do with growing up, for if it was I wanted nothing to do with it.

  She asked, ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you looked at me just then.’

  Tell the truth, Charlie. ‘You . . . and old times.’

  ‘Good. I’ve also been thinking a lot about old times recently. I’ll make you a decent cup of char, and switch on Workers Playtime. Then we can think about them again.’ I just then began to get that feeling I was sailing back into troubled waters.

  I was subjected to my medical in a dingy shed of a place in Croydon, just up the road from the Fairfield Halls. There was a plant producing domestic gas somewhere in the vicinity: all of the buildings seemed stained by soot, and a smell of sulphur hung in the air. Old Man Halton would have felt at home here because he’d been gassed in the trenches in the First World War. Maybe you already knew that. This part of South London smelled like a school locker room after a spinach lunch. No wonder they moved the bleeding airport – it wasn’t a smell with which to welcome visitors to the Capital of Empire.

  There were twelve of us in a small waiting room lined with wooden benches . . . and three of my co-defendants were taken before me: two As and another B. We were a mixture of reservists and national servicemen, and I’d already been told that the medical the former got was a makeweight – not so much a matter of ‘fit for service’ as ‘not unfit for service’: there’s a subtle difference. The other B in the room was named Babcock, and I guess he’d had a bad time before, because his hands never stopped shaking, and his
head gave the occasional twitch. He also looked decidedly jaundiced.

  A RAF corporal checked our names off on a clipboard, called us ‘gentlemen’ and seated us in alphabetical order. When I stood up and crossed the room ten minutes later, because I was fed up with the sun shining in my eyes, he almost had a fit.

  ‘Mr Bassett is it, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal.’

  ‘Then sit where you’re fucking well told, sir.’

  ‘No, Corporal.’

  ‘What did you say, sir?’

  ‘I said “No, Corporal” . . . and wash your fucking ears out if you didn’t hear me the first time.’

  He swelled like a party balloon receiving the benefit of a particularly decent pair of lungs. And he turned red. Sweat broke along his hairline in his attempt to keep a lid on his temper. If he’d been subject to a medical himself just then, he would never have passed. He literally stamped a foot – I’d not seen that before – before he shouted, ‘We’ll bloody well see about that,’ and banged out through a flimsy door which warped in his grasp.

  ‘You forgot to say sir,’ I called after him helpfully.

  Someone – an L, I think – said, ‘Blimey, now you’re for it.’

  The twitcher’s head was now permanently to either one side or the other, ticking like a metronome. I wouldn’t have minded being ‘for it’ if it would get me out of this madhouse.

  A huge head, about eight feet above the ground, looked around the door through which the corporal had bolted. It roared, ‘Fucking Bassett – I mighta guessed.’

  I said, ‘Yes, WO,’ meekly. Then I grinned, and said, ‘Hello, Alex.’

  Watson had told me years ago that the new postwar RAF was so small that you kept on bumping into people you knew. He had been right. Alex was a service policeman, a giant and a sort of recurring nightmare.

  He grinned back, ‘Wotcha, Charlie. Heard you were coming back. Thought I’d surprise you.’

  ‘You did. You sent an idiot in here to look after us.’

  ‘The corporal is not an idiot. He is your perfectly average corporal.’

  ‘I see your point,’ I told him, ‘. . . and it saddens me. If I’m too rude for the RAF can I go home now?’

  ‘Not a chance. You’re all A1 medical passes – bound for glory the lot of you.’ He glanced around the room, and smiled. Tigers smile like that. When Alex was in a room he dominated it by size alone. He didn’t have to do anything else: in that small waiting room it was like being in the presence of a fairy-tale ogre. I didn’t like to ask how he knew our results even before the medical exams had been completed.

  ‘That thing can’t be A1.’ I indicated Babcock. His tongue was lolling out now. It was a peculiarly large tongue, and a funny colour. A small waterfall of saliva dribbled from his mouth to the lapel of his expensive camel-coloured coat.

  Alex said, ‘We’ll give him to the Army then. They’ll make him one of their B1s and call him an LC: that’s all we’ll need from you lot anyway.’ LC was Lines of Communication, a medical grading that kept half-dead soldiers away from the front line, but enabled the mad sods in charge to deploy them just about anywhere else. It meant they still got you, and was no bar to being sent abroad. ‘Now just you lot behave yourselves, and I’ll send in the char wallah – but don’t go for a piss afterwards, you’ll need it later.’ Ah, the romance of serving the Crown.

  We did what waiting rooms are designed for. We waited. Babcock’s eyes closed. At times I didn’t know if he was asleep or dead. His twitch became slow, but more pronounced. He was probably still alive. The damp patch on his lapel grew larger. His name was called from behind the door three times before he responded.

  He came back into the waiting room half an hour later, alert but miserable. He no longer twitched, and the damp stain was drying nicely.

  ‘A fucking one. Fucking bastards,’ he snarled at us, and slammed the outside door almost off its hinges as he left. Then it was me.

  Two doctors: one female and one male. The female looked as friendly as Irma Grese on leave from Auschwitz. The man could have done with a clean white coat. He looked tired.

  He told me, ‘I do the pricks and backsides, just to save the real doctor’s blushes. She does the rest; you’ll find she’s very good.’

  ‘Am I a prick or a backside?’ I asked him.

  ‘A bit of both I expect. The Warrant Officer told me you were the troublemaker.’

  ‘What was the matter with the man who just left, sir?’

  Irma actually smiled. It changed her completely. If I had hung around long enough I might have fallen in love.

  She said, ‘Nothing. Nothing but having drunk half a gallon of lemon Cremola Foam stirred up with about eight Alka-Seltzers. It makes you look very strange for a short time, but the effects wear off quickly. You’ve no idea what some men will do to avoid conscription.’

  ‘I have. I don’t suppose it would help if I started falling off my chair?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’ She gave me the smile again. I would have told jokes all day to be rewarded with smiles like that. ‘You’re perfectly A1 – I can tell it just by looking at you . . . but we’ll go through the motions just in case. If you go behind the curtain and drop your trousers, Dr Crippen will be with you in a moment.’

  It could only happen to me, I thought.

  Both medics took less than fifteen minutes between them. I finished in front of Irma. She said, ‘You’ll do, Mr Bassett, although you drink too much. You’ll have a beer gut by the time you’re forty unless you ease up and take some exercise.’

  ‘I’ll remember that, Doctor.’

  ‘Good. Now bend over that chair back please, and drop your trousers again.’ For a moment she sounded like my old headmaster: when you walked into his study he invariably had a glint in his eye, and a cane in his hand.

  ‘I thought you didn’t do backsides, Doctor.’

  ‘I don’t, but I do give the inoculations, and you have a bucketful coming up, according to your RAF forms. Try to relax: I’ll re-sharpen the needle after the first ten.’

  They always like to finish with a laugh, the doctors – have you noticed? After she’d finished with my bum and my upper thigh I felt as if I would never sit down again. Bloody sadist. The last thing she said was, ‘We always tell people not to drink alcohol for at least twenty-four hours after this course of injections.’

  ‘I’ll remember that too, Doctor.’ I hate people telling me what not to do.

  Alex always brings out the Jerry in me: you know – orders will be obeyed at all times without question. He told me to get lost afterwards, but not so lost that I couldn’t meet him back near the medical centre for opening time. He thought we could get drunk together, and get up to date. I don’t know where he got the idea I’d enjoy going to a pub; after all, the doctor had just banned me.

  I walked around Croydon to kill time. It was, and is, a terrible place. Grey people, living in grey houses, driving grey Hillmans, working in grey offices and grey factories. For the first time in my life it occurred to me that God was inordinately fond of grey, and in Croydon had created His masterpiece. After that I was ready to get drunk, and from the number of people already in the pub by half past five, I reckoned that most of Croydon agreed with me.

  A few hours later, the woman doctor came pushing through the crowd with her medical bag. She nodded to me, but moved on up to a small raised stage. I wondered if she moonlighted as a stripper, but wasn’t all that disappointed when she was joined by a small jazz band, put the silver cornet she’d pulled from her bag to her lips, and began to blow like an angel. She caught my eye halfway through the set, smiled that smile again, and began to drop the spectacular notes of ‘Doctor Jazz’ in front of us. That was when I realized that Croydon had always been one of my favourite places on the planet.

  I remembered what it was like in the war – having joined up in the RAF then, I was sent back home again with a silly little silver badge to stick on my jacket, and told to wait my turn.
The badge was to prove to strangers you were doing your bit. I had been impatient as hell to get into uniform. This time it wasn’t like that. Not at all. I simply didn’t want to go, and a moany little voice at the back of my brain was wheedling away with You’ve done your bloody bit; why can’t they pick on somebody else?

  The weeks before I had been called up to my basic training unit in the 1940s had been full of purpose and vigour . . . principally trying it on with girls I might never get a chance with again, and eventually losing my virginity with a generous neighbour. This time I prevaricated, did nothing, avoided decisions and wasted time. I slept with Elaine again – more for the form of it than anything else, both of us working off guilts we didn’t understand – and afterwards I felt even more fed up than before.

  When the brown envelope eventually arrived it was smaller than I remembered, but almost a relief. Elaine was watching me in my cramped office when I opened it – she had taken to standing close to me all the time, which crowded me. I didn’t like that, but we’d been skin-to-skin like old times the night before, so it wouldn’t have been right to tell her to back off. And before you get the idea that I was demonstrating some of my finer feelings by that decision, I wasn’t. I simply didn’t know when I’d want her again, and wasn’t going to cut off my nose to spite my face.

  She asked, ‘This is it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, love; I’m afraid it is. This time I really have to pack my bag.’

  ‘Well then? Where?’

  I had been afraid she’d ask that. The Canal Zone, Malaya, Cyprus or Kenya? What romantic destination was suitable for a brave British serviceman these days?

  ‘Dungeness.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Fucking Dungeness. Just up the road.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t swear.’

  ‘You’d swear if you’d been posted to Dungeness.’

  ‘You’ll still be able to see me if you get any time off.’

  ‘I’m sure that was exactly what was in the RAF Board’s mind when they decided!’ I shouldn’t have snapped. It hurt her. She looked down.