If I had dreams, I didn’t remember them. There was a tune running through my mind, somewhere just below the pain threshold. That first time it was ‘Tiger Rag’ played by Bunny Berigan. Mind that tiger . . . it told me, over and over again. It reminded me of a Hindu proverb: Do not curse your god for creating the tiger; bless him for not giving it wings. The music is there every morning now, and although the tunes are different, they linger all day.
My new world was full of shining dazzling hospital whites, which made my eyes water. That was my excuse, anyway. A man’s voice, slow and with that Bedfordshire twang, asked, ‘Can you hear me, son?’
When I didn’t reply he said, ‘You’ve had a bit of an accident. You were in an air crash.’
I shut my eyes. My brain issued orders to move my tongue and my lips, trying to make, ‘How long . . .?’ but my voice dried up. My lips felt dry and brittle, and parts of my mouth seemed stuck together, and not to work too well. I had a raging thirst.
‘Days. You’ve been ill; but they tell me you’re through the worst. You breathed in flames.’
‘Must give up smoking.’
‘That’s the ticket. Hang on half a mo, I’m going to get the nurse.’
I tried to tell him, ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ but my voice croaked out to nothing halfway through.
I must have drifted off again. When I reopened my eyes they still weren’t too useful. There was a nurse in whites fussing about me. She smelled of soap, so at least one of my senses was functioning, but I couldn’t focus on her. I didn’t know if she was plain or a looker. I was pleased to realize that I could still wonder about that when my face, mouth and shoulders hurt so bloody much. I could see the Bedfordshire accent alongside her in outline, and I could see his khaki clothes. Bloody brown job.
He told me later that he was a veteran of the last bash – more than thirty when he was demobbed in 1919. He had presented himself at the hospital in his old Yeomanry uniform during the Battle of Britain, and installed himself as a part-time nursing attendant, despite various medical objections. He just adopted individual fallen heroes, and nursed them through to their discharge – one way or another, if you get my drift. When my eyes started to come back a few days later I saw his stripes: a Sergeant like me. So that was all right then. Once, when the pain of my face overcame me, and I couldn’t touch it for fear of damaging the scorched skin, I cried. I couldn’t help it. He sat and held my hands. After a couple of days one of my periods of sensibility coincided with the bedside inspection of Herr Doktor: I didn’t know her name at that stage, but learned later that her name was Hildegard. She spoke with a husky, strained European accent, like Marlene Dietrich. She smiled a tired smile, sat on a chair beside the bed, and said that my face was all right and that only my shoulders were bad. She said that even they should heal quickly, but that they would always be ugly and scarred and twisted. She didn’t hold back. In later life, she told me, they might give me a spot of trouble.
‘Face?’
‘Not so bad. People might think that you were an inefficient schoolboy boxer, but the skin still looks like skin. You only had a light grilling. I was more worried about your eyes, that was once you had started breathing properly again. You might have to watch your chest for a few years.’
I tried to smile without cracking the crust the skin around my mouth had grown into.
‘I’d rather watch yours.’
The light in her eyes went out: I knew immediately that I’d said the wrong thing. She said flatly, ‘I’m fifty.’ As if that meant anything.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Germany. A big town: you won’t have heard of it.’
‘What is it called?’
‘Krefeld. Why? Do you know it?’
‘No.’
At least I was feeling well enough to start lying again. I had been to Krefeld three or four times and left it burning. Left some pals there too.
The Sergeant’s name was Bernard. He told me afterwards, ‘Some of the men won’t let her near them because she’s German.’
‘Idiots. If the bus-driver has a heart attack, you don’t ask the man who grabs the wheel if he has a driving licence.’
‘That’s quite clever, son.’
‘Someone told me. I can’t remember who. Am I going to get out for Christmas?’
He shook his head.
‘Definitely not, but there’ll be some sort of a party for the walking wounded, and some of the nurses are goers. You want a beer?’
‘Yes. How?’
‘You got a crate of it under your bed. Some Yank rolled in with it for you a couple of days after you arrived. That, and a big box of flat bog paper: the hospital staff nicked that, I’m afraid. We’ve been short for months.’
‘Are you on the squares of newsprint like the rest of us?’
‘Aye.’
‘Does someone always nick the Jane cartoons off them?’
‘Aye. How did you know?’
‘It must be some sort of crime epidemic.’
‘You’re talking crap again, Charlie, instead of shitting it. You must be ready for your snooze.’
My father got time off and came south, and was in the room with me during the worst times, a week after the crash . . . turns out that he and Bernard were in adjacent trenches in 1916, and they got on famously after they found that out, swapping trench-foot stories. The RAF sent me a new uniform with a decent walking-out jacket, peaked cap and the proper badges for a newly promoted officer. Perhaps they’d awarded me the accident in revenge for my having lived long enough to become an officer.
The Christmas party was a light-hearted, gay affair in an indoor squash court. There was dancing to a wind-up gramophone, and a bar. Most of the booze was home-made. My father came down again for it, and when he and Bernard sat in straight chairs out in front and sang ‘The Charlie Chaplin Song’, instead of laughing, everybody started to cry. I disgraced myself by fainting while I was dancing the Beguine with a spotty Irish redhead. Bernard told me that it had looked quite comical, because she had continued dancing with me well after I was out of it: flinging me about like a corpse. Then she realized that I might be, screamed and dropped me.
Bernard told me that when I awoke, which was days later, sometime near January. Dad had gone home earlier, a bit shaken up. As soon as I opened my eyes Bernard slipped out to telephone him. He must have tipped Dr Hildegard off, because as he left she swept in. She made me drink a half pint of water before allowing me to sit up, or speak. When I looked down I could see that I was skin and bone; my pyjama jacket hung off me. I asked her, ‘What happened to me?’
‘If I was a foul-mouthed Englishman I should say Buggered if I know!’
‘But you’re not. You’re my doctor; for which I am grateful.’
‘I am glad we have cleared that up. But it doesn’t alter the case: I don’t know what happened to you. You passed out, and slipped into a coma. We tried for the best part of a day to bring you round.’
‘No good?’
‘No good. You just lay there with a nasty grin. Several eminent doctors from other hospitals have visited you. They didn’t know what to do either, so I feel better about it. Now that you’re back I shall consider you one of my successes.’
‘What do you think happened to me? Your best professional judgement.’
‘I think that you banged your head in the accident, and that we didn’t notice. Bad internal head injuries are often revealed by severe swelling of the head: haematomas.’
‘Yes?’
‘By the time you were brought in here your head was badly swollen anyway – by the heat and your burns. I think that that concealed an impact injury – I missed it.’
‘Will it happen again?’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, but there is a dying Australian next door who has a phrase for it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘No guarantees.’
‘Situation normal,’ I told her. Then, ‘I think I’ll get up.’
She smiled. It took years off her, but she shook her head, ‘Definitely not. This time we go slowly. I asked Bernard to bring you a perambulator. He will push you about.’
‘But he’s as old as my father.’
‘. . . and he doesn’t go around crashing aeroplanes.’
Bernard walked in preceded by an ancient wooden wheel-chair.
I said, ‘Jawohl, Frau Doktor,’ and earned a scowl from the woman who had kept me alive since December. Bad one, Charlie.
Bernard took me visiting the larger wards, although they depressed me. There were a lot of people with bits missing, and sometimes, when you looked behind their eyes, you realized that there were bits missing there as well. The only positive note was that a nurse sat with me through each night. The night nurses were young, and some of them pretty; and when I couldn’t sleep flirted with me until I felt drowsy.
The spotty Irish redhead was one of them: she wasn’t spotty any longer. She had long, wavy and lustrous red hair, and when I told her that I was in love with her she laughed it off. Late one night she leaned back in the uncomfortable upright chair they used to keep my nurses awake in the wee small ones, kicked off her shoes, and rested her feet on the edge of my bed. I could have touched them, but I think that that would have spoiled it. The small radio the girls had smuggled into my room was burbling away to a dance station in the background. It was the Glenn Miller Band and ‘String of Pearls’. I asked her, ‘When will they move me out of here, and into the general ward?’
‘I’m not sure they will: you’re too unusual.’
Then I noticed the tears running down her cheeks. My heart gave a huge scared lurch.
‘Don’t be sad. I don’t mind.’
‘What?’
‘That I’m going to die.’
‘Don’t be soppy. What are you talking about?’
‘Then why are you crying?’
She wiped her cheeks with a slightly used handkerchief. ‘I always cry when I hear “String of Pearls”, stupid. I remember him when he was alive.’
‘Who?’
‘Glenn Miller, of course.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes. His plane went down in the Channel in December. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. It must have happened when I was hibernating . . . I’m not going to die then?’
‘ ’course not. Don’t be daft. We’ll discharge you in a week or so if you don’t faint again.’ She sniffed, and prodded my hip gently through the blankets with her stockinged foot. A reprieve, and what’s more things were looking more promising.
‘Does my face look good enough to kiss yet?’
‘Getting there, Charlie Bassett: I’ll tell you when it is.’
The next night she brought me a newspaper she had saved; its front page announced the band leader’s loss in big black words, around a large publicity photograph of him wearing the Major’s cap I had last seen him with. You may not believe this, but the face I recognized was that of a Major I’d once seen going into the American Red Cross Officers’ Club in Bedford with a girl I’d met. Then again, snoozing in the seat behind me, a fellow passenger in a light aircraft, in which he’d offered me a lift to Manchester. I had flown a trip with Glenn Miller, and hadn’t known it: that must have amused him. I told her, and she went all snotty.
‘You don’t have to shoot a line with me, Charlie Bassett; everyone has a Glenn Miller story these days.’
Privately I agreed with her, and decided to leave it at that. Anyway, that was the night she gave in to my jokes, slipped the small bolt on the door, and into my bed. She had long milky white legs, and smelled of Lifebuoy. It had been a long time, and I wasn’t too handy, but she didn’t seem to mind. When I hugged her into my sore shoulder after the event I told her, ‘I don’t even know your first name.’
‘Give me one.’
‘Again? Let me get my breath back, love.’
‘Don’t be silly; give me a name. Make one up.’
‘Gloria.’
‘Like Gloria Swanson. I like that; I’ll keep it forever for whenever I’m going to be bad. Now; give me one.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘Even if it kills me?’
‘I’m a nurse. You’re in good hands.’
*
Bernard went a bit odd at the end of January. In ’45 we were a nation of people going a bit odd. It must have been something to do with the war. He’d been in a secret specialized Home Guard mob before and told nobody about it. Now he had to go back to parades, and carrying his rifle openly, although still wearing his 1914–18 uniform. They were bloody awful days. I read a hundred books, and didn’t remember a word of them.
David Clifford began visiting me about then. The first thing he said was, ‘There appears to be a soldier from the Great War sitting outside your door: rifle, bayonet, puttees, gas mask round his neck; the bloody lot. Bloody strange. He asked me for a pass before he’d let me in.’
‘Got one?’
‘As a matter of fact I have. Signed by your CO.’
‘I didn’t think he knew I was here.’
‘Not that one. Your German doctor, Doctor Hildegard somebody.’
‘Where the bloody hell have you been? I’ve been here for ages, and no sod from the squadrons has been anywhere near me.’ I tailed off sort of lamely, ‘. . . it’s a poor bloody show. That’s what I think.’
Cliff looked smart; well, as smart as he could. He had his sheepskin-lined flying jacket over his uniform. I felt disadvantaged: I was sitting in a cane chair they had brought me, but was still in pyjamas and a dressing gown. They had hidden my walking-out clothes in case I did.
‘You haven’t been listening, have you? Visiting, except next of kin, was verboten. Frau Doktor’s orders: kaput.’
‘That means finished: it looks as if it’s just started again, if you’re here.’
‘That’s the style, old boy. The bang on your head didn’t do permanent damage then?’
‘You know about that too, do you?’
‘Yes, the Colonel told me when he briefed me to come down for this little session.’
‘Colonel?’
‘My boss.’
‘I thought you were in the RAF.’
‘See? You picked it up: I knew you were feeling better as soon as I walked in the room. Can I sit down?’
He pulled the hard upright chair towards him: it didn’t look as if I had much say in the matter.
Bernard put his head round the door. He was wearing his helmet. He ignored Cliff but asked me, ‘Everything OK, sir?’
‘Fine Bernard, but don’t call me sir: we were both still sergeants when I arrived.’
‘You won’t overdo it, sir?’
‘No, Bernard.’ I sighed. ‘I’m fine. I’ll call you if he gets difficult. A couple of cups of char wouldn’t come amiss.’
‘I’ll get one of the young ladies to see to it, sir.’
Cliff asked, ‘What would he do, if I got difficult?’
‘Bayonet you, I think.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you? Why would he do that?’
‘We haven’t established that. He adopted me when I arrived here: it’s something we haven’t discussed. Have we, Bernard?’ I directed the last three words at the open door. Beyond it Bernard barked, ‘No need, sir.’
Cliff said, ‘I suppose that closing the door is out of the question?’
Bernard’s next bark beat me to it.
‘It is.’
I told him, ‘OK, that’s enough, Bernard.’ Then I told Cliff, ‘But he’s right; the door stays open.’
Bernard brought the tea in. He gave Cliff the one with tea slopped into the saucer.
Cliff said, ‘He wasn’t here when you came in.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I was.’
‘How come?’
‘I travelled in the meat wagon with you. In case you had any famous last words; that sort of thing.’
‘Was that important?’
‘Yes: there was no one else, you see.’ He looked away, regret on his face, but not grief. For some reason that struck me as very professional.
‘Thank you.’
‘Think nothing of it. You were in a bit of a state. It took us about half an hour to find you. The old cow had veered hard to the west as she went in . . .’
‘That was because the starboard outer went mad, and pushed her that way. I was in a Lanc that did that once: my pilot fought her all the way back from Germany.’
‘That’s what I came today to find out.’
‘Don’t you know what happened?’
‘You’re not listening again, Charlie. I told you: no one else made it.’
‘I saw the female Joe. Her head was on fire.’
‘Don’t tell me any of that, Charlie. I don’t need to know.’
‘Squeamish?’
‘No. It’s just a matter of taste. Don’t forget that the silly sods made you an officer.’
There was one of those gaps in the conversation until I asked him, ‘You said I looked in a bit of a state?’
‘We found you sitting up against a grave stone in Tempsford graveyard. Initially I thought that that was quite appropriate. You’d been blown about twenty yards into it by the last explosion. Your face was puffed up, and black. You had strips of curled skin hanging from your shoulders . . .’
From outside the door Bernard coughed once.
I said, ‘It’s OK, Bernard. I want to hear this.’
Cliff said, ‘I can’t get over the way your face has healed. You don’t look burned too much.’
‘Frau Doktor says that I was lucky. My shoulders are worse. When I move you can see exactly the way the muscles expand and contract: I can make them dance to Dorsey Brothers tunes. Want me to show you?’
‘No thanks, old boy. Sounds ghastly; sorry.’
‘She tells me that the greatest effect on my face will be to the hair follicles: something goes wrong with them when they’re burned up. I won’t ever have a moustache or beard: probably won’t have to shave again.’
‘Handy.’
‘Yes. I thought so. Why did you call your Boss the Colonel?’
‘Sometimes I think you radio ops can’t take anything in unless it’s coming through a pair of headphones. I told you before that the people down there are more flexible than your usual service wallah. My boss is a Colonel because the brown jobs run the security. They run the security because they run the operations out there that we deliver to. We’re only delivery boys: don’t forget that.’
‘Seems odd.’
‘I’ll tell you something odder: they want you back for something when you’re ready. They must be even stupider than we are.’
‘Your Army takes itself too bloody seriously. Can Frohlich visit me?’
‘No. He’s gone.’
‘Where?’
Cliff shrugged. I pushed him.
‘What happened to them?’
‘You don’t need to know,’ he told me. And that was that. Funnily enough I felt better after that. I’d always thought that Frohlich would visit, and I was miffed that his people had forgotten me so quickly. I wondered if they were lying in a prison camp, hospitals or deep in Mother Earth. I turned away from it: Cliff would never tell me.
‘That Yank,’ Bernard told me a day later. ‘He’s back, sir.’
‘Then let him in.’
I felt better. They let me wear my RAF jacket over my pyjamas: it made me feel as if I was still part of something.
‘He hasn’t got a pass.’
‘Sell him one.’
Tommo slouched in a couple of minutes later, and crash-landed on the upright chair.
He said, ‘Your guard made me pay him for the privilege of visiting. I thought that I was supposed to be the gangster back here. Not for long, though.’
‘Thank you for coming to see me, Dave, and what does that mean?’
He tossed a carton of Luckies and a package of pipe tobacco on the bed, and told me, ‘Shipping me home. I been here since 1943, and now we’re winning they’re shipping me home.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing: they say I’ve done my bit. Uncle Sam says, Thanks; but you can go home now.’
‘That’s great.’
‘No it ain’t. What about my business?’
‘Being a gangster?’
‘Don’t be funny. I’ve a good number here. Back at Fort Nowhere I’ll be up to my arse in non-com officers who spend their time in the john reading the rule book. Then they’ll pull up their pants, pull the chain, and throw the goddam thing at me.’
‘They’ll wipe their arses first,’ I told him.
‘What with? I just arranged the whole year’s sanitation paper allocation shipped over here to fill your needs.’
‘I’ll phone Winston, and tell him there was a mistake. Get him to send some back again.’
‘Truly?’
‘He wouldn’t know what it is. He has aides-de-camp to wipe for him.’
‘Yeah, we got those in the US too.’
This took about thirty seconds it seemed, and then we were both grinning. I could grin now without my face cracking in half. Dave said, ‘You’re looking almost human. Time you got a nice English girl.’
‘I had one, thanks, Tommo. Are you serious about leaving?’
He sighed as if he meant it, and looked at his funny peaked olive cap, as he twisted it in his hands.
‘Yeah. It’s a shit; so I came to ask a favour. There were some things I couldn’t arrange to sell off or move: they don’t give you all that much notice – they’re in two kitbags outside with your mastiff. Will you stash them for me until I come back for them?’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Christ, yes: I’ll find someone’s palm to cross with silver once I’m back over there; I’ll try for a posting in Germany – that’s where the money will be when it’s all over.’
‘It’s not knocked-off gear that I’ll go to prison for if I’m caught with it?’
‘Christ, no. I wouldn’t do that to you. Not without telling you. We’re buddies, ain’t we?’
‘We’re buddies,’ I confirmed. It made me feel very old. ‘Of course I’ll keep it for you. How long have you got?’
‘A few days. Then they’re flying me out to Ireland – Nutts Corner or the Lodge – then a big boat home from Belfast Loch.’
‘I always thought that an appropriate name for an airfield – Nutts Corner. Can you make a few telephone calls for me before you go? See if you can find out where Grace is; I can’t ask the people here – they don’t know her.’
Tommo Thomsett knew Grace – a girl I knew. She’d known me, and a lot of other men that I knew, if you get my drift. She was an ATA pilot I’d last seen about six weeks before my accident. At that time she was pregnant and deciding what to do about it. I’d asked her to marry me a few times: at that time it was a compulsion I had every time a pair of knickers hit the deck. The point is that Grace was the only one to have said Yes so far; albeit in a vague sort of way.
I’d asked her, ‘Marry me?’
She had said something like, ‘OK. Yes. Once the war is over.’
‘OK.’
‘. . . if you can find me.’
That was the nearest I got.
The American said, ‘Amazing! You still hankering after her?’
‘Yes; stupid, isn’t it? I’m going to miss you too, Tommo.’ I meant it.
‘Not for long you won’t.’ I could take that two ways, couldn’t I?
He called me back a few days later to say that Grace was AWOL: nobody knew where she was. He’d attracted some heat, he said, even asking the questions. And her father would like to see me when I got out. That was her stepfather. He had as much reason to worry as the rest of us. Not many people knew that.
Early February drifted in. Bernard was putting bets on for me with a runner he knew at his local. I always lost, but I was training for after the war: I was going to be a racing journalist. I didn’t know much about the horses but I liked the idea, and I’d seen Prince Monolulu on the cinema newsreels.
A few days before Frau Doktor signed my movement order Bernard strolled in unannounced, took the upright chair to its limit with his mass, and told me, ‘Your dad’s looking in tomorrow, sir. Him and your uncle.’
‘Good. I was wondering how Dad was.’
‘Most people write letters: you could try that.’
‘I’m going to get paid for what I write.’
‘You’re a mercenary little bugger, sir, and useless with the gee-gees. Anyway, he’s just popping in to say goodby-ee for the present. Him and your uncle.’
‘Why? Where are they off to?’
‘France. Then Germany most like; I almost envy them.’
‘Don’t be daft, they’re old men.’
There was a bit of a hiatus then: because they would have been round about the same age as Bernard. He asked me, ‘They were in the trenches, weren’t they? During the last lot?’
‘You know Dad was. You swapped trenchie stories with him over Christmas, didn’t you?’
‘So I did. What did he do over there?’
‘Pioneer. They both were. Dug holes for other people most of the time. They probably dug yours.’
‘There you are then. His Country needs him again, and all that; only as a civvie on better wages. Loads of the old fellahs are doing it. Loads of spondulicks around, apparently. The front is moving so fast they need people who can dig trenches quickly. Your old man spotted his chance.’
‘Silly sod! What if he cops it?’
‘I don’t think that he cares much, sir. Like father, like son. Why is that?’
‘He evacuated my mum and my sister with him to Scotland when our house was doodlebugged last year. My uncle found them a flat. Dad found a job. There was something the matter with the stove in the flat. He got home from night shift one morning to find them dead in their beds. It changed him. Changed us both.’
‘Is that what you fell out over, sir?’
‘Yeah, but only for a couple of weeks. No point staying mad at the only one you’ve got left.’
‘But he still feels it, I’ll bet. Him and his brother both. So they’ve gone to take it out on the Jerry, by digging trenches all over his allotments.’
I wanted to leave hospital in my uniform. Frau Doktor was there to say goodbye. She had to lean down to kiss me, and I was surprised when she did. When Gloria did the same I felt her hot little tongue slide briefly into my mouth, like a wren in a hedgerow.
She asked, ‘Will you come back and show us how you are?’
‘I know you’ll never write.’
‘How?’
‘You haven’t written to anyone from here, have you? You’ll not come back either.’
‘Give me another kiss.’
She obliged. She was an obliging sort of girl.
‘Yes I will,’ I told her. ‘I’ll come back for more of those.’
It was a lie, but her smile was half worth it. Cliff thumped my half-filled old leather case and Tommo’s two heavy kitbags into the space behind the front seats of the Singer.
‘Strewth. What have you got in these?’
‘Don’t know. I’m minding them for a friend.’
I drove and crashed the gears all the way to Bedford, until I got the hang of it again. Cliff rested his arm over the low door and watched the grey-green countryside sliding past, pretending not to notice. I told him, ‘We should have put the hood up, it’s bound to rain before we get back,’ and of course it bloody did.