Silent War Read online

‘I thought you didn’t want to go to Egypt?’

  ‘I didn’t, but that’s not the point. I didn’t want to go to Dungeness either. Even less, in fact. Have you ever been to Dungeness?’

  ‘Once; one night with Terry. I bruised my bum on the pebbles.’

  That lifted it: my black mood, I mean. I grabbed her around the waist, swung her and gave her a hefty kiss. She threw a Force Nine right back at me. We went down to the small hut I bunked in, even although it was the middle of the morning, and when we came out again it was as if we had settled something rather good. She followed me into my office and grabbed me for another kiss, saying something like, ‘I don’t ever want to be without you for good, Charlie.’

  ‘I can cope with that, sweetheart.’ Why are the good ones always married? ‘I’m mad about your belly,’ I told her, ‘. . . and your legs, and . . .’ Sometimes I say the right thing.

  She smiled. ‘That will do for now, Charlie.’

  The way I saw it bloody Dungeness was as bad as a living bloody death sentence. Devil’s Island without even the Devil for company. But Dungeness was only going to be a stepping stone to somewhere nastier, of course: the station designation number of its location had a large black T behind it so I was in for some more bleeding training in something or other.

  Then they would probably stuff me in an aircraft again.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Dungeness. If you haven’t then you made a good decision. It’s a fat thumb of a few trillion pebbles sticking out into the English Channel, battered by wind and wave, with the French looking on from the other side. It’s the least hospitable place, after Bergen, in the whole world . . . and has more flies than an Egyptian karzi. Believe me; I know.

  There was a lighthouse on it in my time, but that may have fallen down since the bastards built a nuclear power station next door in the Sixties. That should tell you something: they only put nuclear piles where no sensible people go. I suspect that the lighthouse was in fact surplus to requirements – any sea captain who had experienced the dubious attractions of Dungeness before would hug the French coast twenty miles away, just to stay away from it.

  You can take it from that little outburst that I was not enamoured of the place. At that time, as well as the lighthouse, it had a large, damp, concrete bomb-proof box: especially for me. And rain of course, and the bloody wind never stopped blowing. I still hadn’t had a uniform issue, so I reported in my old RAF battledress blues which had long since lost their proper buttons. The black ones I’d sewn on looked much better anyway. Three shirts, one spare set of thins, five pairs of socks and my washing kit . . . and I also had a small pistol a mate had once given me, tucked into my flying jacket’s pocket. Charlie Bassett, gent, reporting for duty, sir. Able, but far from bloody willing.

  By 1952 we hadn’t quite got round to taking down all the barbed wire we’d strung along the South Coast. That was probably something to do with still not trusting the French not to invade us while our back was turned: you know what they’re like. In 1377 the bastards sailed right up to Rye, a neighbouring port, burned it to the ground and stole the church bells. As far as Rye, Sussex and Kent are concerned a state of war still exists between them and the Frogs, and will until we get those bells back. As far as I’m concerned we should have left the barbed wire up – we’re going to need it one day. They had even overlooked a landmine or two, so no summer went by without news of a family being blown to kingdom come making sandcastles on a beach. I suppose Dungeness had some sort of excuse for the rusty wire . . . there were still live firing ranges just round the corner at Camber: still are, come to that.

  At least they’d taken the gate away, so the road along the spit started at a gap in a barbed-wire fence left there to discourage the holidaymakers. And also a corporal in RAF uniform. He was unhappy-looking and definitely familiar. The little bastard from the Croydon medical unit. I stopped my old Singer alongside him.

  ‘Mr Bassett is it, sir?’ He hadn’t a clipboard of names this time, so I guessed that I was the only one expected.

  ‘Of course it is. We met a few weeks ago.’

  ‘So we did, sir.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Posted, sir; same as you.’

  ‘No, I mean what are you doing here at the end of the road?’

  ‘I’m to drive the car, sir.’

  ‘I don’t need a driver.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but you do. I’m to do the driving and you’re to do the walking. CO’s orders, sir. Everyone walks up to the station the first time. She says it’s good for us.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Yes, sir; the CO’s a Wren officer. If you don’t mind my saying, sir . . . it does seem odd to begin with, but you soon gets used to it.’

  ‘It’s a training station, right?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s an OLP, but there’s always a couple of people like you around going through the refresher.’

  ‘I’m not sure about OLP.’

  ‘Operational Listening Post, sir. We got them all up the East Coast now, and along the Channel. Some up in Scotland too. We listen to the Commies as they sail past.’ Then he shivered and said, ‘Would you mind getting out of the car an’ swappin’ over, sir? It’s bleedin’ perishin’ out here.’ It was too.

  ‘Sure you can drive it, Corporal . . . ?’

  ‘Baxter, sir . . . and yes, I can drive it. Drove three-tonners in the war.’ That was hardly reassuring, but you never know when you’ll need someone on your side, so I said, ‘Baxter and Bassett. Sounds like a couple of sand dancers, doesn’t it? We’d better watch out for each other.’

  I thought for a moment he was going to laugh, but he said, ‘I’ll think about that, sir,’ and put my little car into gear. I stood there and watched him dwindle into nothing as he drove away towards the shadowy buildings in the mist at the end of the causeway. They looked miles away.

  They were, and it started to rain before I was halfway there. My last RAF posting had been to a listening station like this one, and I’d had a few mad moments of mad passion with a mad Wren there, so you can see that my interest was engaged by the time I walked through the gate of a proper barbed-wire enclosure.

  The guard didn’t salute because I wasn’t properly dressed – Salute the uniform, son, not the man: I can still hear my first drill sergeant barking that in my face. This guy had the face of a twelve-year-old; I guessed he only shaved weekly – and, oh yeah, he had a Stirling sub-machine gun looped casually over his shoulder like a girl’s handbag. He probably scared the Russians half to death.

  The concrete block was enormous: much bigger than I had imagined. Three storeys and the only windows I could see were long narrow slits near the top: it wasn’t a building designed for beauty. The discipline there was my sort of discipline – casual – or so it seemed at first. People saying hello, smiling and shaking your hand. I didn’t get to meet the CO immediately: she was away at a meeting in the WD bunker at Hythe. When we collided in the afternoon her sailor suit looked familiar – a Wren – but that’s where hope died: I’d never met her before. She was small; smaller than me. Very smart and with short black hair. I reckoned she was about forty.

  It’s funny how your values change: in those days I thought a woman in her forties was old. Now I look at a woman of fifty and think she’s just approaching her prime – a perspective of age you see. What I mean is that I didn’t fancy her. I know you don’t like it, but that’s what I was like in my twenties: the first good look I had at a woman was generally an estimate of her sexual potential. It got the decision to chance my arm out of the way. Just get used to it, and accept that most men are like that, even if we don’t admit it all that often.

  She probably knew this because she didn’t ask me to sit. She had a metal desk and metal furniture inside a concrete office. It looked just like a place that people could run wars from. I hated it instantly. The atmosphere had the romantic charm of a pub’s outside urinal. An educated voice: ‘Welcome,’
but not to where, or to whom. Then, ‘I’ll be your CO for two or three weeks – until we come to a decision about you. Call it an assessment if you like, or a judgement.’

  ‘What kind of judgement, ma’am?’ She smiled at the ma’am. Maybe I’d got it right first time for a change.

  ‘Whether you’re any good as you are, need retraining, or are no damned good at all.’ She had a tight little smile that meant precisely nothing. It irritated me.

  ‘. . . And if I’m no damned good at all, ma’am?’

  ‘Back to Civvy Street as sharp as you like.’

  ‘. . . Then can’t you send me back right away, ma’am? I’ll be no damned good at all – I promise you, ma’am.’

  She leaned back in her state-of-the art CO’s chair, smiled at me and fiddled with a pencil.

  ‘Too many ma’ams, Bassett.’ A week ago I had managed an airline; now I was back to being just bloody Bassett again. ‘You’re trying too hard. I spoke to a warrant officer in the RAF Police about you last week. He called you a comedian who couldn’t keep his hands off women, and had an interesting but fatal disregard for Queen’s Regs. He said that your next permanent address will probably be a prison somewhere.’ Bloody Alex.

  ‘There you are, then. Get rid of me while you can.’

  She smiled again. Maybe I’d been shipped in to provide the entertainment. She said, ‘You’ll work four-hour shifts, one on three off, with a regular operator on your elbow all the time. Your first shift starts in’ – she consulted a man’s wristwatch that looked as if it had been liberated a few years ago – ‘about three quarters of an hour. Just time for you to stow your gear. By the way, what happened to your uniform?’

  ‘Not issued, ma’am. Maybe they are waiting for the results of my assessment.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ I was sure she would. ‘We’re a Joint Services establishment here – you probably realized that – and there are a few civvies around as well, so we lack some of the service formality you’re used to. Keep your paws off the ladies, though, do your job and we’ll all get on.’

  I didn’t ask what would happen if I didn’t; it was written all over her face. My first more or less normal CO in eight years was the Angel of Death, and she scared the wits out of me.

  ‘Do I get any time off?’ I asked her. ‘I still have things to take care of.’

  ‘Ask me next week; I’ll think about it. That’s all for now.’ She put her head down and began to find a file on her desk of obsessive interest. Dismissed. She hadn’t even told me her bloody name. As I about turned she said, still looking down at her papers, ‘Mr Baxter will have told you a woman naval officer was in command here. You expected someone else, didn’t you?’

  I stopped in the doorway and turned to face her.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘She warned me to look out for you. She’s a friend of mine; out of the Service now – she has a couple of sprogs.’

  I said the first thing that came into my mind – never a good thing. ‘Neither of them is mine.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘She never wanted children either; she told me that.’

  She took pity on me, smiled her little smile – but it was as if it was intended for someone else – and said, ‘Never believe a woman who says that, Pilot Officer; they’re only testing you.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘. . . a bit heavier than when you last saw her.’ Fat, she meant. Women are cruel about each other’s looks.

  ‘I didn’t mean that. Is she well? Happy?’

  This little woman had eyes that could be as black as coal; or the muzzles of gun barrels. This time her stage directions obviously read softly, and with feeling.

  ‘I’m glad you asked that. If you hadn’t I would have given you the hardest time here you’ve ever had anywhere in your life . . . and then made sure they sent you to the Arctic Circle for three years!’ I made no response. Dumb insolence had always been my speciality. She added, ‘From what she’s told me I’d say she was as well as could be expected, having experienced you. I would also say that it was none of your damned business.’ Frozen moment in time. I waited for the music but it never came, and she said, ‘You can go now.’

  I didn’t trust myself to say anything, nodded, turned and left as smartly as I could. Stuffed. I felt as if I’d had the biggest roasting of my service career, and she’d done it all without raising her voice, or swearing directly at me.

  Six hours later I lay on a flock mattress on a concrete shelf in the four-bedded bunk room I’d been allocated, trying to get some sleep. It stank of farts and sweat, and a dull warehouse light, without a switch to extinguish it, glowed on the ceiling. The guy beneath me was snoring, and a civvy technician on the opposite bunk had his nose buried in a Mickey Spillane book. The woman my new CO had spoken of earlier had been named Gloria, and I’d loved her more than I ever let on. I was always falling in love with the wrong types, but I suppose that I began to look at Gloria in a new light that evening. I’d thought of her as a hard-hearted bitch who’d nearly wrecked my mind; it hadn’t occurred to me before that maybe I’d hurt her as well. I was still hoping that I hadn’t when I fell asleep. How stupid was that?

  The work wasn’t difficult. We just listened to the vibes in the air until we heard a bandit, and then listened more closely. I was surprised to see we were still using some of the kit I’d been brought up on. In a curtained alcove, at one side of the concrete box we worked in, was a set of radios straight out of a Lancaster or a Hallibag, back to back with the smaller sets out of a B-17. I’d worked with both, and could still dismantle most of their vitals and reassemble them in my sleep. That’s what one of my Army trainers made me do to begin with; I spent a day stripping them down, and putting them back together. He followed my every move and made copious notes in a notebook, but he said nothing. How can you know how you’re doing if the buggers won’t speak to you? I did two four-hour stints with him back to back, and when I finished with the Yankee job and tested it he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to know how to do that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Strip the American set. I’ve never done it.’

  ‘Now you know then. Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be teaching me.’

  ‘Where’d you get that idea? Lucy?’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘The CO. It’s what the girls call her, and they can be a bit nasty. Juicy Lucy or sometimes “Mother”. She’s worse than a mother hen. I’m a tankie, by the way – Royal Armoured Corps. Call me Rob. You?’

  ‘Charlie. RAF. Seems a long time ago, though. What next?’

  ‘I thought we’d get in your wee car and go and find a pub. Lucy said you could have a night off once you’d fixed the spare radios. They haven’t worked for weeks.’

  ‘What kind of show is this?’

  ‘A very poor one at times, but refreshingly informal.’

  ‘That’s what the CO said.’

  ‘She can get some things right, can’t she? You get yourself a wash, while I round up a couple of the girls.’

  ‘Which girls?’

  ‘We have a few mysterious civvies from the electronics factories. Philips Electrical I think, or Mallards. They’re likely to be a bit stir-crazy, so watch yourself.’

  I even polished my shoes. Rob sat in the back with one of the girls, his arm quickly looped around her shoulders. It was dark back there. I heard her giggle and say Stop it; it’s too early for that! The girl alongside me had a starched white blouse, below-the-knee-length dark, wide skirt, and white socks above her dancing pumps. She had short dark hair, a nice smile and a sad sigh. I asked her name.

  ‘Ivy.’ Nice voice. Sutton or Epsom. Somewhere round there. Grammar-school voice.

  ‘What’s the matter? . . . I heard you sigh.’ The car was in gear, and moving forward now. So were we.

  ‘I miss my boyfriend. He only gets down once a month.’ I wouldn’t have minded getting down a bit myself. My old mate Tommo once told me that s
ome girls liked it.

  ‘What are you down here for, then?’

  ‘The money; what else? We’re saving to get married.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her – feeling as old as her father. She was probably as old as I was on my first night visit to Germany in the war. ‘. . . you’ve plenty of time yet.’

  Minutes later we pulled up after Rob shouted, ‘Stop: we’re here!’ by a funny-shaped building with a sign saying The Pilot Inn above one of its doors. It looked a bit ramshackle, but if you’d had to withstand what the Dungeness weather threw at you for a hundred years you’d look a bit ramshackle too.

  Before we got out I asked, ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Originally it was a fairly big wooden ship,’ Ivy replied. ‘The landlord says it was a smuggling ship, but nobody really knows. When it got stuck on the Ness the locals dismantled it and built a house out of her. The house became a pub.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Seventeen something I expect.’

  Rob said, ‘I like hearing you two getting to know each other, but can you get a bleeding move on? We’re freezin’ to bleedin’ death back here.’ It was the way the old Singer was built – only two doors, so we had to lean the front seat backs forward to let the rear passengers out.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ I told him. ‘Mine’s a bitter, and Ivy’s a . . .’ I glanced at her and grinned.

  She smiled back and said, ‘A port and lemon. A large one if you can afford it.’ She’d clearly said that before.

  There was a public telephone in the small wood-lined passage before the saloon bar. I looked at my watch, but it was already too late to call Elaine, so I didn’t feel bad about it.

  Two port and lemons and two pints later I asked Ivy, ‘What do you do, Ivy . . . I mean, what do you do really well?’

  She smiled. It was a nice smile, but a bit goofy and lopsided. Her reply was slow coming. It wasn’t what I’d meant, but it would do.

  ‘Cling,’ she told me, then reached out and touched the rough cloth of my old blue battledress blouse.

  Maybe I could put up with Dungeness for a fortnight.