The Forgotten War Read online

  I’d been right first time: there was something the matter with this lot. Maybe they should go to the zoo more often, I thought.

  ‘Can I bring my driver?’

  ‘She’d be welcome too, sir. I’d be proud to sign you in. Just over there.’ He indicated a red brick building with a pre-war look about it.

  Golgotha’s engines powered down one after another, and her great paddles ground to a stop. A small Bedford truck swung out from a hangar: that would be her ground crew coming to put her to bed.

  ‘Go on ahead, then. I’ll just speak to my driver and follow you.’

  I went back to Rees’s office first. I recovered my old jacket, and left him the white coveralls, hoping never to see them again. I had just discovered something: I didn’t like flying. I wondered if I ever had.

  Dolly was asleep in the back seat of the Austin. At least she was alone. I walked slowly from the car to the bar, with Dolly alongside me. She paced with her hands crossed behind her back. In her tailored uniform, with her cap tipped slightly to one side, she looked quite the thing. I walked slowly because I wanted to talk.

  ‘There’s something odd going on here, Dolly; these people are all talking to me as if they know me.’

  ‘Ah. I wondered if that would happen.’

  ‘Wondered what?’

  ‘If you knew about The Pink Pole.’

  ‘You mean Pete?’ I asked with confusion. ‘He was our rear-gunner; of course I know about him. We called him the Pink Pole because he wasn’t a Red. Some of the other Poles were Reds.’

  Dolly looked at me. No, she didn’t smile.

  ‘Charlie, The Pink Pole is also the name of a book that came out a few days ago. There was even a story about it in the newspaper – the Daily Express, I think. Your friend Pete has written a book, or someone over here has written it for him: I’m not sure which. Ever since Enemy Coast Ahead everyone’s writing their war story; haven’t you noticed? He’s published it without permission, and caused a bit of a kerfuffle.’

  That made me grin. I liked the idea of Pete still causing kerfuffles, and I liked the words that Dolly used.

  ‘He probably couldn’t work out whose permission to ask. He changed services at least twice, maybe three times . . . and ended up in the Polish army, I think,’ I told her. ‘Good old Pete. What’s he say in his book?’

  ‘Not much that anybody didn’t know; but maybe too much about you. Apart from writing about flying with you, there’s a story about meeting you in Holland after your tour, where you were on a mission of some sort and won a French medal for bravery. Then you saved the lives of hundreds of German civilians trapped in a cellar, and liberated a hospital. Bremen, he says. Do you feel like a hero?’ Then she added ‘sir’, just in case I replied yes.

  I stopped. Dolly stopped.

  ‘That’s bollocks,’ I said. Dolly looked down. She had pretty feet, in fashionable not-quite-WAAF black shoes. Even so, I didn’t know what she found so fascinating about them. She didn’t say anything, so I explained. ‘None of it happened that way. It’s complete bollocks.’

  ‘I suspected that. Most of these stories usually are, but I don’t think that you will be able to do anything about it now.’

  The small serving-bar was an atoll in a pitching sea of bodies, many of whom carried that indefinable niff of aeroplane. As we pushed into the room Dolly had to hold on to my sleeve at the elbow in order not to become separated. I liked that. Rees greeted me: ‘Ah; Aircraftman Shaw.’ That meant nothing to me. It was probably something amusing in his circle. He pulled us into the crowd, where I came up against Dr Junor with drinks for us in his hands. He greeted me with, ‘Well done, Mr Bassett. It is often the way.’

  ‘Cheers. What is?’

  ‘People who talk freely about killing Germans turn out to be those who actually saved some. Well done.’ Bollocks.

  Party. If anyone ever asks me what the RAF is good at, I will think for a long time, and eventually answer with the word party. An hour or so later I was halfway to getting crocked. Dolly Wayne got into the swing of things, and circulated: it was second nature to wartime WAAFs. They were used to roomfuls of women-starved men. Eventually we backed into each other, like strangers. I turned and asked, ‘What about the Woolwich Arsenal?’

  ‘They’ll probably keep it open for you; enjoy this while you can.’

  That night we slept at Hendon. In separate beds. In separate rooms. In separate bloody blocks. The RAF hadn’t changed that much.

  In the morning Rees came to see us away. His one eye looked horribly bloodshot. It was also twenty degrees off centre, and rolled horribly. Who had certified him fit for flying? He asked, ‘You got my drift yesterday, when I playfully called you “Shaw”? Mean of me, by the way. Sorry.’

  ‘No, Squadron Leader, I didn’t.’

  ‘T. E. Lawrence. Of Arabia fame, and all that. He joined the RAF as Aircraftman Shaw in order to get away from all of the fuss. That was his excuse, anyway. Foreigners gave him medals too, I think.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Trying to tell you to keep your head down, old son; the RAF and the Army don’t like odd bods like you . . . never really liked him either, you see; shafted him in the end. Bye.’

  In the car I asked Dolly, ‘Do you know what all that was about?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not going to tell you. It’s one of those things that are better for you to work out for yourself.’

  ‘Has Pete dropped me in the shit?’

  ‘The better I know you, Charlie, the more I believe that you were never out of it. In your whole life, probably.’

  When we hit the London suburbs and headed for the Woolwich Arsenal she stopped the car and made me get into the back. She also started calling me ‘sir’, again. I’d already had the car for longer than the twenty-four hours it had been signed out for. I wondered if Dolly would get into trouble. Maybe she’d spent her life deep in it, too.

  I should have credited her with more savvy. She’d phoned Piers before the party really took off. At Woolwich Arsenal I was whisked from one low red-brick building to the next, and reissued with a uniform which was folded into large cardboard boxes.

  It started with more shirts than I’d ever owned at one time in my life. Dolly followed me around with the car. We filled its back seat, and the boot. A thin old man with wings of silver hair and a shiny pate wouldn’t issue me with boots or shoes until he had measured my feet about eight different ways. I was embarrassed because I hadn’t washed them for a couple of days . . . but he didn’t seem to notice. I hadn’t realized that the Arsenal covered so much ground: acres and acres of it inside a high periphery wall, just like a dockyard.

  ‘I’m ’onoured to have met you, Mr Bassett,’ the old boy said as he finished giving me my clothes. ‘The missus will be chuffed when I tell her.’

  Somewhere in the background Dolly sniggered, and covered it with a little cough. They let me go after I’d signed for enough uniform to clothe a small squadron. As a sergeant I’d had to make do on less than half of that issue, and even then some had been falling to bits before I signed for it. That was when it hit me. The bastards had promoted me back again. I suppose that I had Pete to thank for that. Bollocks. Double bollocks.

  I tried my luck with Dolly on the way home. We were chuntering away about some inconsequential nonsense, the way a man and a woman do when they’re sizing each other up, when I put my hand on her knee and carried on talking as if nothing was happening. Bloody childish. She also carried on talking as if nothing was happening, but just as deliberately lifted my paw and dropped it back in my lap. Nothing doing, Charlie. She helped me out with my luggage, but only as far as the tiled Victorian hallway of the Highgate house; the rest was up to me. I opened my mouth to say sorry, when she beat me to the draw with ‘Would you like to come to church with me tomorrow?’

  ‘Give thanks for my deliverance?’

  ‘That too; if you like.’

  ‘If you like.’

 
‘You’re repeating me.’

  ‘No: I’m replying to you. It means yes, please, and I’m sorry that I put my hand on your knee.’

  ‘Oh. I see. Good . . . and I’m not, by the way – sorry, that is.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘That you put your hand on my knee. My place at ten-thirty tomorrow. We can walk.’

  ‘Uniform?’

  ‘Definitely. Number ones. We’ll have to see if we can scrounge some coupons and get you a few civvies next week. You look a bit like a rubble rat in that lot: I don’t want to go out with a man that the police are always stopping.’ I realized that there was still a lot to learn . . . about England, and the way that women thought.

  ‘What are “rubble rats”?’

  ‘The people who still live in the shelters, and in the cellars on the bomb sites: they’re also squatting in unoccupied houses, and unused Tube stations. The Sketch said that there are nearly a hundred thousand of them in London alone.’

  ‘That can’t be right; but I’ve seen the soldiers and their families you see begging on the streets.’

  ‘Yes, those – and deserters and criminals.’

  ‘People like me, you mean?’

  ‘No, Charlie. Not people like you. They’d never come to church on Sunday.’

  ‘Have you ever asked them?’

  Dolly bit her lip, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to her, then said, ‘No . . .’bye, Charlie,’ spun on her heels, and headed down the steps to the car.

  She’d won this set whilst I didn’t even know what game we were playing. She made a mess with the clutch, and ground the gears. After that I started to feel pleased with myself again.

  After I lugged the kit up to my room and laid out my number ones for Sunday, I went downstairs, collected Stan and his boy, along with a few bottles of beer and lemonade, and crossed the road to Highgate Woods. We watched the cricket for a couple of hours. One of the teams had a black player who reminded me of my dead friend Francie. This guy must have been nearly seven feet tall, and bowled like a demon. When I thought about Francie I wondered why I always recalled him as my friend, when the truth was that I hardly knew him: all I remembered about him now was how the English used to make him laugh, and how he’d made me laugh. Behind the house I saw that my car was standing outside the garage doors. Les hadn’t left a message. I was probably still in his bad books.

  I didn’t see the match out. The local Calton Cricket Club was fielding against a Joint Services Eleven when I left. One of the slip fielders had only one arm, and leaped around like a one-armed grasshopper. If he’d have had two he would have been good enough for the MCC. Stan’s wife crossed the road to fetch me: a policeman had called, she said. He wanted me to return his telephone call. There was no doubt about it: the telephone was here to stay.

  This one was in the lower hall: I dialled the number that Stan’s wife had been given, and a big voice answered, ‘Station Officer. Hornsey Police Station.’

  I asked for the policeman who had left me a message.

  ‘Sergeant Southwell speaking.’

  ‘You asked someone to tell me to call you. My name is Bassett.’

  ‘Pilot Officer Bassett?’

  ‘That’s right. Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not for you, sir, no. Do you know a Mr Paul Fortingale?’

  ‘I know a Piers Fortingale.’

  ‘Can you wait a moment, sir?’ There was a clunk. The sergeant had put the telephone handset down. In the foreground I could hear a rustling of papers, and in the background a mutter of voices. When he came back he said, ‘That’s right, sir. He says that you would know him by that name. He says you work with him and will vouch for him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I can’t release him until someone vouches for his good name: he gave us yours.’

  ‘Bugger him.’

  ‘An apt phrase, sir, under the circumstances. Could you come by the police station for him?’ I wasn’t that keen; the last time I’d walked into a police station I had walked out again in handcuffs, remember? The problem was that Piers was nominally my boss, I supposed, until I reported to a new station.

  ‘Where is it – this police station?’

  Southwell gave me simple directions, slowly, and using small words. Policemen get very good at that.

  London is made of brick. I’ve never understood the Victorian and Edwardian love affair with the humble brick. Maybe they just over-invested in the LBC – that’s the old London Brick Company. On the ten-minute drive I passed eight different bomb-sites. I found myself counting them. On each the bricks had been collected, cleaned and stacked; ready for reuse. The houses had gone, and the people had gone, but the bricks went on for ever. There was a bay in the pavement outside Hornsey’s brick police station long enough for two cars. I slotted the Singer in behind a tired-looking Wolsley police car.

  Southwell was one of those men who sound like they look; and also sound like their given name. If you’d met him in civvies you’d have taken him for a working farmer. He asked, ‘Mr Bassett?’

  They must have been having a slow afternoon.

  Then he said, ‘Sorry to break into your Saturday.’

  ‘That’s OK. What’s happened to Piers?’

  ‘He was detained on the Heath, sir. Coming out of the bushes with another gentleman.’

  A couple of years earlier I would have blushed.

  ‘Is that all? What did he say?’

  Southwell looked at his notebook. ‘That they were looking for his pocket watch. He said he lost it around there a few days ago, and his companion had offered to help him find it.’

  ‘Are you satisfied with his explanation?’

  ‘Frankly, no, sir. They said they didn’t even know each other’s names. Unfortunately your friend has been cautioned in similar circumstances before, but if you’ll vouch for him I’ll let him go again this time – being a civil servant has got to count for something – as long as he realizes this is his last caution. Next time he’ll be nicked.’

  ‘I understand. I’m also sure that Mr Fortingale will understand. He’s not stupid; he wouldn’t want to put his career in jeopardy.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it, sir, if you’d just identify him.’

  The sergeant took me downstairs to the cells, which gave me a bit of a turn. The heavy scent of disinfecting Lysol in the air was still too familiar to me. The cells had old-fashioned open-barred doors, like animal cages. Piers’s face wore a sulky look. He didn’t say anything, so I told Southwell that I recognized him.

  ‘Fine, sir . . . just some papers for you, and we’ll have him out in a jiffy.’

  ‘What about the other man?’

  ‘A Dr Junor, sir: a foreign gentleman. He has a diplomatic passport; we had to let him proceed.’ You should have seen my face.

  I had two forms to sign. I didn’t like the second one: it made me legally responsible for Piers’s good behaviour for thirty days.

  Outside, I waited in the car. Piers was another ten minutes. When he came out he was carrying his tie – RAF, of course – belt and shoelaces in one hand. He slid into the passenger seat and said, ‘Not a fucking word, Charlie. Not one.’

  ‘OK. Where to?’

  ‘That’s two.’

  ‘You can always walk,’ I told him.

  ‘Bugger you.’

  ‘The copper told me that that seems to be the problem.’

  I drove him over to the Bull and Bush on the other side of the Heath. He said that some people he knew were usually there. There were several bars; I was relieved that they were all empty. We sat outside and drank warm and watery bitter. The sun was beginning to go down, and it was too early in the year for there not to be a nip in the air – you’ll have heard the old Pearl Harbor joke, so I won’t repeat it. Piers went for another round. I was oddly relaxed. I felt as if my body was expanding; settling down.

  By the time Piers re-emerged with a couple of pints I had got my pipe going. He said, ‘W
hat are you looking so goddamned pleased about?’

  ‘Want a truthful answer?’

  ‘Why not?’ He lit a fag from a fancy packet; probably American.

  ‘For the first time in years I feel as if I’m more or less in control of my life. I know the RAF still has its hooks into me for a few months, but anyway, that’s what it feels like.’ I tailed off; a little lamely, I thought.

  Piers surprised me because I expected a smart return of serve from him – that was his way – but instead he said, rather wistfully, ‘That must be a good feeling.’

  ‘Tell me about Piers and Paul.’

  ‘Mind your own damned business,’ Piers snarled at me aggressively.

  ‘I’ve just got you out of a police cell, Piers. I’m entitled to a few answers.’

  It was nice for the boot to be on the other foot for a change. He paused and thought about it. He eventually said, ‘Yes; I suppose so. No mystery. My family named me Paul. I thought that Piers was more romantic, so I changed it, but not officially.’

  ‘You know, I didn’t think that you were a pansy when I met you. I thought it was all an act.’

  ‘Maybe it is.’

  ‘I don’t understand that.’

  He sighed. My Latin teacher used to sigh like that whenever I handed a translation to him. Exasperated. ‘Look, Charlie. Can’t we just say that I may be not quite as discriminating as the next man, and leave it at that?’

  ‘What about Dr Junor?’

  ‘I meet him for a drink now and again. He’s an interesting man. Now: I told you – change the subject.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Anyone spoken to you about the rubble rats?’

  ‘I’ve heard the phrase a couple of times. Homeless people.’

  ‘That’s a generous description, Charlie. It’s an organized unwashed and unscrupulous army of scum – the untermenschen. They have occupied great chunks of London. Mr Attlee is frightened that it could bring his government down.’